Re: [DISCUSSION PATCH 00/41] random: possible ways towards NIST SP800-90B compliance

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 03:15:55PM +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 02:38:36PM +0200, Torsten Duwe wrote:
> > Almost two weeks passed and these are the "relevant" replies:
> > 
> > Jason personally does not like FIPS, and is afraid of
> > "subpar crypto". Albeit this patch set strictly isn't about
> > crypto at all; the crypto subsystem is in the unlucky position
> > to just depend on a good entropy source.
> > 
> > Greg claims that Linux (kernel) isn't about choice, which is clearly
> > wrong.
> 
> I think there's a small misunderstanding here, my understanding is
> that for quite a while, the possibilities offered by the various
> random subsystems or their proposed derivative used to range from
> "you have to choose between a fast system that may be vulnerable
> to some attacks, a system that might not be vulnerable to certain
> attacks but might not always boot, or a slow system not vulnerable
> to certain attacks". Greg's point seems to be that if we add an
> option, it means it's yet another tradeoff between these possibilities
> and that someone will still not be happy at the end of the chain. If
> the proposed solution covers everything at once (performance,
> reliability, unpredictability), then there probably is no more reason
> for keeping alternate solutions at all, hence there's no need to give
> the user the choice between multiple options when only one is known
> to always be valid. At least that's how I see it and it makes sense
> to me.

Thanks for spelling it out in much more detail than I was willing to :)

thanks,

greg k-h