cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar

[Nate Lawson]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Mark Murray wrote:
> Sam Leffler writes:
> > On Apr 10, 2004, at 1:54 AM, Mark Murray wrote:
> > > If it is felt that further whitening of the VIA C3 RNG is needed,
> > > then I believe that Yarrow would be overkill, and that a much
> > > smaller hash function will be sufficient.
> >
> > Unless I misread the paper it seemed very clear in stating that you
> > need to post-process the h/w RNG.  I run all my h/w entropy sources
> > through the rndtest module (FIPS-140 testing) and frequently see that
> > h/w entropy sources are not to be trusted (note that rndtest samples
> > the entropy and that the FIPS test suite is far less stringent than
> > the testing done in the papers).
>
> I'll look at putting a low-overhead entropy-pool-stirrer after the C3
> RNG.

What problem are you trying to solve?  Why must you design another PRNG?
Even if it was fine, it would only be receiving entropy from a single
source and would waste the availability of other sources as well.

> > I have not had time to review Marks changes but I agree with Nate
> > that h/w entropy sources should not be trusted and some form of
> > post-processing must be done.  Whether this is Yarrow or something
> > else is unclear but the papers cited did a thorough analysis while all
> > I've seen from Mark are statements that he believes these sources are
> > good.  When it comes to stuff like this I believe strongly in taking a
> > conservative approach.
>
> Actually, the paper that Nate pointed at said that each bit of entropy
> that the C3 RNG supplied delivered between 2/3 and nearly 1 bit of
> "good" randomness. If the on-chip whitener was on, then "0.99 bits per
> bit supplied" (my paraphrase) was given.

That is approximately correct.  I think we should use the VIA hardware
source to seed our PRNG.  That would be great.  I do not think we should
throw away the useful properties of a PRNG that cannot be provided
directly by a hardware source.

> Still, opinion seems to be in favour of further postprocessing, so I'll
> do it.

I haven't looked at the FreeBSD PRNG yet but why not seed Yarrow?

-Nate