Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86/random: Issue a warning if RDRAND or RDSEED fails

Jason A. Donenfeld
2024-01-30T17:49:34Z

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 6:32 PM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/30/24 05:45, Reshetova, Elena wrote:
> >> You're the Intel employee so you can find out about this with much
> >> more assurance than me, but I understand the sentence above to be _way
> >> more_ true for RDRAND than for RDSEED. If your informed opinion is,
> >> "RDRAND failing can only be due to totally broken hardware"
> > No, this is not the case per Intel SDM. I think we can live under a simple
> > assumption that both of these instructions can fail not just due to broken
> > HW, but also due to enough pressure put into the whole DRBG construction
> > that supplies random numbers via RDRAND/RDSEED.
>
> I don't think the SDM is the right thing to look at for guidance here.
>
> Despite the SDM allowing it, we (software) need RDRAND/RDSEED failures
> to be exceedingly rare by design. If they're not, we're going to get
> our trusty torches and pitchforks and go after the folks who built the
> broken hardware.
>
> Repeat after me:
>
> Regular RDRAND/RDSEED failures only occur on broken hardware
>
> If it's nice hardware that's gone bad, then we WARN() and try to make
> the best of it. If it turns out that WARN() was because of a broken
> hardware _design_ then we go sharpen the pitchforks.
>
> Anybody disagree?

Yes, I disagree. I made a trivial test that shows RDSEED breaks easily
in a busy loop. So at the very least, your statement holds true only
for RDRAND.

But, anyway, if the statement "RDRAND failures only occur on broken
hardware" is true, then a WARN() in the failure path there presents no
DoS potential of any kind, and so that's a straightforward conclusion
to this discussion. However, that really hinges on "RDRAND failures
only occur on broken hardware" being a true statement.

Also, I don't know how much heavy lifting the word "regular" was doing
in your original statement. Because my example shows that that
irregular RDSEED usage from malicious users can hinder regular users.
If that also applies to RDRAND, the "regular" makes the statement not
as useful for taking conclusive action here.