Question - seeding the hw pseudo random number generator

Stephan Müller smueller at chronox.de
Mon Mar 20 06:39:47 PDT 2017


Am Montag, 20. März 2017, 14:28:58 CET schrieb Herbert Xu:

Hi Herbert,

> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 12:19:32PM +0530, PrasannaKumar Muralidharan wrote:
> > AF_ALG interface for rng does have seeding support. I think hw_random
> > does not provide seeding support intentionally as I understand that
> > True RNG need not require seeding (please correct me if I am wrong).
> 
> Yes.  We should be converting PRNGs in hwrng over to algif_rng.

IMHO this not only applies to the PRNGs in drivers/crypto (which should simply 
register with crypto_register_rngs) but also to ~/hacking/sources/linux/arch/
s390/crypto/prng.c which exports a /dev/prandom file.

For the seeding, it may make sense to follow the example given with crypto/
drbg.c using the add_random_ready_callback function.

Ciao
Stephan



More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list