Hi. This is a question towards the crypto/entropy experts.
When seeding the kernels entropy cache (which is then ultimately used for /dev/random), e.g. by (semi-)TRNGs like haveged[0], audio-entropyd[1], Simtec’s Entropy Key[2] or friends... can one spoil the randomness by that or is this impossible by design? Of course it's easy to check the distribution of these randomness sources, but as we see on the plain Mersenne Twister, a "perfect" distribution is not necessarily usable for cryptography. Further, one could imagine that closed products like the Entropy Key are hacked or have backdoors, which may make them produce subtle patterns that could later be used in cryptoanalysis. (This is in no way a claim, that Simtec would do this,... just an example.) Cheers, Chris. [0] http://www.issihosts.com/haveged/ [1] http://www.vanheusden.com/aed/ [2] http://www.entropykey.co.uk/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
