[Cryptography] randomness +- entropy

[Bear]

On Tue, 2013-11-12 at 18:23 +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
> On 2013-11-12 16:44, John Denker wrote:
> > The fact is, there are some applications that cannot make do with
> > low-quality randomness *and* cannot afford to wait.
> 
> I don't think so.
> 
> I think this is a configuration bug.  By the time you have completed the 
> boot process, you have accumulated lots of entropy, and there is no 
> cryptographic application so urgent it cannot wait for the boot process 
> to complete.
> 
> However, some idiot puts a process needing true randomness early in the 
> boot process for no good reason.
> 
> A process needing true randomness should fail by design in such case.


I'm inclined to agree.  IMO the kernel ought to simply terminate any
process that attempts to read /dev/random before the boot process is 
complete.