Re: monitoring entropy
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Tue, 14 Oct 1997 14:43:39 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> > Counterexample: ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/pub/software/sigs-0.50.tar.gz
> > uses a lot of entropy for secret key generation.
>
> but it's not at all secret anymore if you drain the pool? i think 'lossy'
> (nonblocking) entropy generation should go into libc, not into the kernel!
>
The kernel can do a better job of it, since it has access to all the
entrophy ever passed through as seed, and since the pool-mixing
function is there anyway, there is no additional cost.
-hpa