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authorJason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>2022-02-07 17:19:24 +0100
committerJason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>2022-03-12 18:00:55 -0700
commit6f98a4bfee72c22f50aedb39fb761567969865fe (patch)
tree387f505ec8470630fb1005bf72035ee862db69e4 /include/linux/random.h
parentc2a7de4feb6e09f23af7accc0f882a8fa92e7ae5 (diff)
random: block in /dev/urandom
This topic has come up countless times, and usually doesn't go anywhere. This time I thought I'd bring it up with a slightly narrower focus, updated for some developments over the last three years: we finally can make /dev/urandom always secure, in light of the fact that our RNG is now always seeded. Ever since Linus' 50ee7529ec45 ("random: try to actively add entropy rather than passively wait for it"), the RNG does a haveged-style jitter dance around the scheduler, in order to produce entropy (and credit it) for the case when we're stuck in wait_for_random_bytes(). How ever you feel about the Linus Jitter Dance is beside the point: it's been there for three years and usually gets the RNG initialized in a second or so. As a matter of fact, this is what happens currently when people use getrandom(). It's already there and working, and most people have been using it for years without realizing. So, given that the kernel has grown this mechanism for seeding itself from nothing, and that this procedure happens pretty fast, maybe there's no point any longer in having /dev/urandom give insecure bytes. In the past we didn't want the boot process to deadlock, which was understandable. But now, in the worst case, a second goes by, and the problem is resolved. It seems like maybe we're finally at a point when we can get rid of the infamous "urandom read hole". The one slight drawback is that the Linus Jitter Dance relies on random_ get_entropy() being implemented. The first lines of try_to_generate_ entropy() are: stack.now = random_get_entropy(); if (stack.now == random_get_entropy()) return; On most platforms, random_get_entropy() is simply aliased to get_cycles(). The number of machines without a cycle counter or some other implementation of random_get_entropy() in 2022, which can also run a mainline kernel, and at the same time have a both broken and out of date userspace that relies on /dev/urandom never blocking at boot is thought to be exceedingly low. And to be clear: those museum pieces without cycle counters will continue to run Linux just fine, and even /dev/urandom will be operable just like before; the RNG just needs to be seeded first through the usual means, which should already be the case now. On systems that really do want unseeded randomness, we already offer getrandom(GRND_INSECURE), which is in use by, e.g., systemd for seeding their hash tables at boot. Nothing in this commit would affect GRND_INSECURE, and it remains the means of getting those types of random numbers. This patch goes a long way toward eliminating a long overdue userspace crypto footgun. After several decades of endless user confusion, we will finally be able to say, "use any single one of our random interfaces and you'll be fine. They're all the same. It doesn't matter." And that, I think, is really something. Finally all of those blog posts and disagreeing forums and contradictory articles will all become correct about whatever they happened to recommend, and along with it, a whole class of vulnerabilities eliminated. With very minimal downside, we're finally in a position where we can make this change. Cc: Dinh Nguyen <dinguyen@kernel.org> Cc: Nick Hu <nickhu@andestech.com> Cc: Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@gmail.com> Cc: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com> Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Yoshinori Sato <ysato@users.sourceforge.jp> Cc: Michal Simek <monstr@monstr.eu> Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> Cc: Guo Ren <guoren@kernel.org> Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> Cc: Joshua Kinard <kumba@gentoo.org> Cc: David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com> Cc: Dominik Brodowski <linux@dominikbrodowski.net> Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com> Cc: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org> Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Cc: Lennart Poettering <mzxreary@0pointer.de> Cc: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'include/linux/random.h')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/random.h2
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/random.h b/include/linux/random.h
index 6148b8d1ccf3..725a4d08c0a0 100644
--- a/include/linux/random.h
+++ b/include/linux/random.h
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ extern void del_random_ready_callback(struct random_ready_callback *rdy);
extern size_t __must_check get_random_bytes_arch(void *buf, size_t nbytes);
#ifndef MODULE
-extern const struct file_operations random_fops, urandom_fops;
+extern const struct file_operations random_fops;
#endif
u32 get_random_u32(void);