[libvirt] [libvirt-users] virRandomBits - not very random

[Martin Kletzander]

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 10:06:25AM -0400, John Ferlan wrote:
>
>
>On 05/29/2018 09:44 AM, Michal Privoznik wrote:
>> On 05/29/2018 03:38 PM, Martin Kletzander wrote:
>>> On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 09:37:44AM -0500, Eric Blake wrote:
>>>> On 05/25/2018 09:17 AM, Michal Privoznik wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>> We should probably seed it with data from /dev/urandom, and/or the new
>>>>>>> Linux getrandom() syscall (or BSD equivalent).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not quite sure that right after reboot there's going to be enough
>>>>> entropy. Every service that's starting wants some random bits. But it's
>>>>> probably better than what we have now.
>>>>
>>>> Here's where we left things last time it came up:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2014-December/msg00573.html
>>>>
>>>> If gnutls has an interface that will give us random bits
>>>> (gnutls_key_generate() in 3.0, perhaps), we should use THAT for all of
>>>> our random bits (and forget about a seed), except when we are mocking
>>>> things in our testsuite, and need a deterministic PRNG from a
>>>> deterministic seed.
>>>>
>>>> If not (including if we are not linked with gnutls), then we should
>>>> prefer the new Linux syscall but fall back to /dev/urandom for JUST
>>>> enough bits for a seed; once we're seeded, stick with using our existing
>>>> PRNG for all future bits (after all, we aren't trying to generate
>>>> cryptographically secure keys using virRandomBits - and the places where
>>>> we DO need crypto-strong randomness such as setting up TLS migration is
>>>> where we are relying on gnutls to provide it rather than virRandomBits).
>>>>
>>>> So at this point, it's just a matter of someone writing the patches.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, do we need to have a fallback at all?  Can't we just drop all the
>>> gross parts of the code the conditionally compile based on GNUTLS
>>> support?  Why
>>> don't we have gnutls required?
>>
>> That's exactly what I'm suggesting in my patches [1]. gnutls is widely
>> available (including Linux, Windows, *BSD, Mac Os X). However, before
>> doing that we need to fix virRandomBits() to actually call gnutls_rnd().
>>
>> 1: https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2018-May/msg02077.html
>>
>
>I have this faint recollection of one of the CI platform builds failing
>because something in the gnutls* family didn't exist there when I was
>making the changes to add the domain master secret code....  After a bit
>of digging, it seems it was a perhaps a CENTOS6 environment:
>
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2016-April/msg00287.html
>
>and since IIUC that's not an issue any more....
>

Oh, cool to know.  Michal also found the patch [1] where Dan switched the gnutls
from being mandatory to making it optional and there is no explanation for that
change in the commit message:

[1] f587c27768ee13f5bed6a9262106307b7a124403

>John
>
>now if I could only figure out why my mail client seems to be dropping
>any patches with "crypto" in the subject line (I'm missing patches 2-4
>and 10 from the series referenced above)...

Maybe you have some weird server-side filter for it?
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