Re: /dev/random in 2.4.6

[Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com>]

Alex Bligh - linux-kernel wrote:

> An alternative approach to all of this, perhaps, would be to use extremely
> finely grained timers (if they exist), in which case more bits of entropy
> could perhaps be derived per sample, and perhaps sample them on
> more operations. I don't know what the finest resolution timer we have
> is, but I'd have thought people would be happier using ANY existing
> mechanism (including network IRQs) if the timer resolution was (say)
> 1 nanosecond.

Why don't we also switch to a cryptographically secure algorithm for
/dev/urandom?  Then we could seed it with a value from /dev/random and we would
have a known number of cryptographically secure pseudorandom values.  Once we
reach the end of the png cycle, we could re-seed it with another value from
/dev/random.

Would this be a valid solution, or am I totally off my rocker?

Chris


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