KernelTrap: Potential Shortcomings in /dev/random

“An email on the lkml pointed to an article suggesting
potentially exploitable flaws in the Linux kernel’s random number
generator, /dev/random. Theodore Ts’o stepped forward as the
original author offering a little background, ‘the Linux
/dev/random generator has been around for a long time; I did the
original implementation back in 1994, back when the crypto iron
curtain was still being maintained by the US Government. As far as
I know, the Linux /dev/random driver was the first OS-based RNG and
predates efforts present in other systems such as OpenBSD, et. al.’
He went on to explain, ‘because of the U.S. export controls on
cryptographic algorithms at that time, in particular anything
relating to encryption algorithms, I chose to use cryptogaphic
hashes as its primary non-linear component, since these were not
problematic from an export control perspective…'”

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