[Info-vax] Linux random number devices, was: Re: SSH/SCP sessions hanging for 7 minutes while reading from "/dev/random"

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-09-30 18:11:18 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2021-09-30, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>> Within recent Linux kernel versions, /dev/random and /dev/urandom are 
>> the same underneath, neither will block post-initialization, and both 
>> will produce the same CPRNG values.
>> 
> 
> On the face of it, that change would seem to be a bad idea.
> 
> For some applications, it might be more important for them to actually 
> block until sufficient high-quality values are available.
> 
> Do you know the reason for the change ?

Once properly seeded, chacha20 or another recent stream cipher can 
produce as much CPRNG data as might be needed.


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