Entropy and DSA key

Lutz Jaenicke Lutz.Jaenicke at aet.TU-Cottbus.DE
Wed Nov 7 07:51:35 EST 2001


On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 01:38:40PM -0600, mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org wrote:
> I would perfer OpenSSL handle all the entropy behind the scenes.  It would
> make our life easier in the portable group.  However it only removes
> around 1000 lines of code in a 55,000 line project (I'm refering to
> portable.  OpenBSD's ssh tree is 45,000 lines.).

I would not expect this to happen. OpenSSL is used by a lot of security
relevant applications, many of them running with root permission.
The OpenSSL library does contact the hardcoded /dev/[u]random location
and will query some hardcoded locations for a PRNGd/EGD socket.
I don't think a library should do things beyond this level. I really
don't want a library to try and run commands (maybe with root permission)
behind my back.

Best regards,
	Lutz
-- 
Lutz Jaenicke                             Lutz.Jaenicke at aet.TU-Cottbus.DE
BTU Cottbus               http://www.aet.TU-Cottbus.DE/personen/jaenicke/
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