poor default seeding of RNG

Tom Holroyd tomh at po.crl.go.jp
Wed Mar 14 17:02:53 EST 2001


Correct me if I'm wrong, but init_rng() in entropy.c doesn't call
seed_rng(), and in fact seed_rng() isn't called from _anywhere_ (in
openssh-2.5.1p2).  So calls to BN_rand() only pick up the
tiny/non-existent amount of entropy added by BN_rand() itself from the
system clock (time in seconds).  Shouldn't seed_rng() be called from
init_rng()?  It should be called from _somewhere_, or deleted.

Thanks,

Dr. Tom Holroyd
"I am, as I said, inspired by the biological phenomena in which
chemical forces are used in repetitious fashion to produce all
kinds of weird effects (one of which is the author)."
	-- Richard Feynman, _There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom_






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