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When /dev/random was directly connected with entropy extraction, without any expansion stage, extract_buf() was called for every 10 bytes of data read from /dev/random. For that reason, RDRAND was used rather than RDSEED. At the same time, crng_reseed() was still only called every 5 minutes, so there RDSEED made sense. Those olden days were also a time when the entropy collector did not use a cryptographic hash function, which meant most bets were off in terms of real preimage resistance. For that reason too it didn't matter _that_ much whether RDSEED was mixed in before or after entropy extraction; both choices were sort of bad. But now we have a cryptographic hash function at work, and with that we get real preimage resistance. We also now only call extract_entropy() every 5 minutes, rather than every 10 bytes. This allows us to do two important things. First, we can switch to using RDSEED in extract_entropy(), as Dominik suggested. Second, we can ensure that RDSEED input always goes into the cryptographic hash function with other things before being used directly. This eliminates a category of attacks in which the CPU knows the current state of the crng and knows that we're going to xor RDSEED into it, and so it computes a malicious RDSEED. By going through our hash function, it would require the CPU to compute a preimage on the fly, which isn't going to happen. Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Reviewed-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com> Reviewed-by: Dominik Brodowski <linux@dominikbrodowski.net> Suggested-by: Dominik Brodowski <linux@dominikbrodowski.net> Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.