Re: [PATCH v4] random: reseed more often immediately after booting

[Eric Biggers]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 06:41:10PM -0700, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> In order to chip away at the "premature first" problem, we augment our
> existing entropy accounting with more frequent reseedings at boot.
> 
> The idea is that at boot, we're getting entropy from various places, and
> we're not very sure which of early boot entropy is good and which isn't.
> Even when we're crediting the entropy, we're still not totally certain
> that it's any good. Since boot is the one time (aside from a compromise)
> that we have zero entropy, it's important that we shepherd entropy into
> the crng fairly often.
> 
> At the same time, we don't want a "premature next" problem, whereby an
> attacker can brute force individual bits of added entropy. In lieu of
> going full-on Fortuna (for now), we can pick a simpler strategy of just
> reseeding more often during the first 5 minutes after boot. This is
> still bounded by the 256-bit entropy credit requirement, so we'll skip a
> reseeding if we haven't reached that, but in case entropy /is/ coming
> in, this ensures that it makes its way into the crng rather rapidly
> during these early stages.
> 
> Ordinarily we reseed if the previous reseeding is 300 seconds old. This
> commit changes things so that for the first 600 seconds of boot time, we
> reseed if the previous reseeding is uptime / 2 seconds old. That means
> that we'll reseed at the very least double the uptime of the previous
> reseeding.
> 
> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Dominik Brodowski <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> v4 uses Eric's formulation relative to the last reseed time, rather than
> my prior one relative to boot time alone.
> 
>  drivers/char/random.c | 28 +++++++++++++++++++++++++---
>  1 file changed, 25 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/char/random.c b/drivers/char/random.c
> index 19a602c69f2f..defdba110d1d 100644
> --- a/drivers/char/random.c
> +++ b/drivers/char/random.c
> @@ -327,6 +327,28 @@ static void crng_fast_key_erasure(u8 key[CHACHA_KEY_SIZE],
>  	memzero_explicit(first_block, sizeof(first_block));
>  }
>  
> +/*
> + * Return whether the crng seed is considered to be sufficiently
> + * old that a reseeding might be attempted. This happens if the last
> + * reseeding was CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL ago, or during early boot, at
> + * an interval proportional to the uptime.
> + */
> +static bool crng_has_old_seed(void)
> +{
> +	static bool early_boot = true;
> +	unsigned long interval = CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL;
> +
> +	if (unlikely(READ_ONCE(early_boot))) {
> +		time64_t uptime = ktime_get_seconds();
> +		if (uptime >= CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL / HZ * 2)
> +			WRITE_ONCE(early_boot, false);
> +		else
> +			interval = max_t(unsigned int, 5 * HZ,
> +					 (unsigned int)uptime / 2 * HZ);
> +	}
> +	return time_after(jiffies, READ_ONCE(base_crng.birth) + interval);
> +}
> +
>  /*
>   * This function returns a ChaCha state that you may use for generating
>   * random data. It also returns up to 32 bytes on its own of random data
> @@ -360,10 +382,10 @@ static void crng_make_state(u32 chacha_state[CHACHA_STATE_WORDS],
>  	}
>  
>  	/*
> -	 * If the base_crng is more than 5 minutes old, we reseed, which
> -	 * in turn bumps the generation counter that we check below.
> +	 * If the base_crng is old enough, we try to reseed, which in turn
> +	 * bumps the generation counter that we check below.
>  	 */
> -	if (unlikely(time_after(jiffies, READ_ONCE(base_crng.birth) + CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL)))
> +	if (unlikely(crng_has_old_seed()))
>  		crng_reseed(false);
>  

Looks good,

Reviewed-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>

- Eric