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On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 12:57:08AM +0100, RW wrote:
> The more significant problem is that initrandom dumps some very
> low-grade entropy into /dev/random before the entropy file (see below).
> Since /dev/random has very limited buffering, and processes the buffers
> in a timed loop,
Arthur and I are aware of that. I believe this behavior of our yarrow
implementation is poorly documented.
> IMO the order should be reversed or the low-grade
> stuff should be piped through sha256.
We considered that. Arthur wanted to do it sooner, but I'm concerned
about impact of multiple sha256 invocations on a large amount of data
on low-end MIPS.
I did some measurements on one of our lower-end Octeon MIPS devices and
lowest-end ARM devices. My concerns are based on the Octeon MIPS result.
I have zero concern for ARM devices [based on my very limited access to
ARM devices].
[I don't have the results anymore thus they aren't supplied here]
--
-- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
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