Re: [PATCH 2/3] random: rng-seed source is utf-8

[Hsin-Yi Wang]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 2:10 PM Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> From: Mark Salyzyn <salyzyn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> commit 428826f5358c922dc378830a1717b682c0823160
> ("fdt: add support for rng-seed") makes the assumption that the data
> in rng-seed is binary, when it is typically constructed of utf-8
> characters which has a bitness of roughly 6 to give appropriate
> credit due for the entropy.
>
> Fixes: 428826f5358c ("fdt: add support for rng-seed")
> Signed-off-by: Mark Salyzyn <salyzyn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: kernel-team@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>
> ---
>  drivers/char/random.c |    2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/char/random.c b/drivers/char/random.c
> index c7f9584de2c8..ee21a6a584b1 100644
> --- a/drivers/char/random.c
> +++ b/drivers/char/random.c
> @@ -2306,7 +2306,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(add_hwgenerator_randomness);
>  void add_bootloader_randomness(const void *buf, unsigned int size)
>  {
>         if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_RANDOM_TRUST_BOOTLOADER))
> -               add_hwgenerator_randomness(buf, size, size * 8);
> +               add_hwgenerator_randomness(buf, size, size * 6);
Hi,

In the next patch, entropy is added by
+                       add_device_randomness(rng_seed, strlen(rng_seed));
+                       credit_trusted_entropy_bits(strlen(rng_seed) * 6);

If the add_bootloader_randomness() function is only used for dt, do we
need to shorten the credit bits?

In dt-schema[1] we stated that this is a uint8 array, and dt is able
to generate this. It doesn't need to avoid using space for parameter
splitting.

For some device, asking for random number is time consuming. Shorten
the credit length makes it have to generate longer seed for dt to meet
the CRNG_INIT_CNT_THRESH threshold.

[1] https://github.com/devicetree-org/dt-schema/blob/master/schemas/chosen.yaml#L55

Thanks