questions about RNGs and FIPS 140

[John Denker]

On 08/26/2010 11:34 PM, Thomas wrote:

> Luckily /dev/random is re-seeded during run-time. 

I would have said something different:  *IF* you are
lucky, then /dev/random gets reseeded during run time.

> So even if you do
> a roll-back of a system and the new input it non-deterministic it will
> generate different output immediately.

Depending on details of the system, there is no guarantee
that /dev/random gets reseeded at all, much less reseeded
"immediately".

There exist lots of small and/or embedded and/or virtual 
Linux systems that have no useful sources of entropy.

The kernel attempts to collect entropy, but there are no
positive lower bounds on the effectiveness of the built-in
measures.  

You could always add a source, but that is a topic for a 
whole new discussion.  For more on this, see
  http://www.av8n.com/turbid/

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