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

Jason A. Donenfeld
2024-01-31T13:06:31Z

On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 9:17 AM Reshetova, Elena
<elena.reshetova@intel.com> wrote:
> This matches both my understanding (I do have cryptography background
> and understanding how cryptographic RNGs work)
> and official public docs that Intel published on this matter.
> Given that the physical entropy source is limited anyhow, and by giving
> enough pressure on the whole construction you should be able to
> make RDRAND fail because if the intermediate AES-CBC MAC extractor/
> conditioner is not getting its min entropy input rate, it wont
> produce a proper seed for AES CTR DRBG.
> Of course exact details/numbers can wary between different generations of
> Intel DRNG implementation, and the platforms where it is running on,
> so be careful to sticking to concrete numbers.

Alright, so RDRAND is not reliable. The question for us now is: do we
want RDRAND unreliability to translate to another form of
unreliability elsewhere, e.g. DoS/infiniteloop/latency/WARN_ON()? Or
would it be better to declare the hardware simply broken and ask Intel
to fix it? (I don't know the answer to that question.)

> That said, I have taken an AR to follow up internally on what can be done
> to improve our situation with RDRAND/RDSEED.

Specifying this is an interesting question. What exactly might our
requirements be for a "non-broken" RDRAND? It seems like we have two
basic ones:

- One VMX (or host) context can't DoS another one.
- Ring 3 can't DoS ring 0.

I don't know whether that'd be implemented with context-tied rate
limiting or more state or what. But I think, short of just making
RDRAND never fail, that's basically what's needed.

Jason