This code has had an extensive rewrite and a good series of reviews, both by the author and other parties. This means a lot of code has been simplified. Pluggable structures for high-rate entropy generators are available, and it is most definitely not the case that /dev/random can be driven by only a hardware souce any more. This has been designed out of the device. Hardware sources are stirred into the CSPRNG (Yarrow, Fortuna) like any other entropy source. Pluggable modules may be written by third parties for additional sources.
The harvesting structures and consequently the locking have been simplified. Entropy harvesting is done in a more general way (the documentation for this will follow). There is some GREAT entropy to be had in the UMA allocator, but it is disabled for now as messing with that is likely to annoy many people.
The venerable (but effective) Yarrow algorithm, which is no longer supported by its authors now has an alternative, Fortuna. For now, Yarrow is retained as the default algorithm, but this may be changed using a kernel option. It is intended to make Fortuna the default algorithm for 11.0. Interested parties are encouraged to read ISBN 978-0-470-47424-2 "Cryptography Engineering" By Ferguson, Schneier and Kohno for Fortuna's gory details. Heck, read it anyway.
Many thanks to Arthur Mesh who did early grunt work, and who got caught in the crossfire rather more than he deserved to.
My thanks also to folks who helped me thresh this out on whiteboards and in the odd "Hallway track", or otherwise.
My Nomex pants are on. Let the feedback commence!
Reviewed by: trasz,des(partial),imp(partial?),rwatson(partial?)
Approved by: so(des)
been tested. With all sources turned on, this unlocks itself in
a couple of seconds! That is no my box, and there is no guarantee
that this will be the case everywhere.
* Cut debug prints.
* Use the same locks/mutexes all the way through.
* Be a tad more conservative about entropy estimates.
Contains:
* Refactor the hardware RNG CPU instruction sources to feed into
the software mixer. This is unfinished. The actual harvesting needs
to be sorted out. Modified by me (see below).
* Remove 'frac' parameter from random_harvest(). This was never
used and adds extra code for no good reason.
* Remove device write entropy harvesting. This provided a weak
attack vector, was not very good at bootstrapping the device. To
follow will be a replacement explicit reseed knob.
* Separate out all the RANDOM_PURE sources into separate harvest
entities. This adds some secuity in the case where more than one
is present.
* Review all the code and fix anything obviously messy or inconsistent.
Address som review concerns while I'm here, like rename the pseudo-rng
to 'dummy'.
Submitted by: Arthur Mesh <arthurmesh@gmail.com> (the first item)
