[5351] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: linux-ipsec: /dev/random
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Denker)
Wed Aug 4 15:49:22 1999
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999 12:21:22 -0400
To: hugh@mimosa.com
From: John Denker <jsd@research.att.com>
Cc: Paul Koning <pkoning@xedia.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
linux-ipsec@clinet.fi
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908041133270.9824-100000@redshift.mimosa.co
m>
At 11:42 AM 8/4/99 -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>
>Pluto is a "bad guy" in that it is using up the entropy-estimate.
Your modesty is charming. But I wouldn't say that pluto is the bad guy.
There "ought" to be a system service (call it /dev/vrandom or whatever)
that provides the sort of bits that pluto needs, without this unfortunate
side effect on /dev/random.
>Is
>there some other software that you are running that is suffering
>because of this?
Yes and no. I cobbled up a hardware RNG for my server, so nobody here is
suffering at the moment. And the machines in the field (the moats) don't
have any great need for /dev/random.
But it's easy to foresee other folks getting into trouble as the user
community gets larger.
Cheers --- jsd
