Re: [PATCH] [4/4] /dev/random: Remove RNDGETPOOL ioctl

[Matt Mackall]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 12:57:23AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> 
> Recently, someone has kvetched that RNDGETPOOL is a "security
> vulnerability".  Never mind that it is superuser only, and with
> superuser privs you could load a nasty kernel module, or read the
> entropy pool out of /dev/mem directly, but they are nevertheless still
> spreading FUD.

While such concerns are a bit exaggerated, the ioctl isn't in fact
very useful: it only gets one of the pools. In other words, it's been
obsolete even for debugging purposes since we went to two pools.

The pool resize ioctl is still racy in a painful way and ought to be
axed as well.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.
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