Bug#448775: Uses too much entropy (Debian Bug #343085)

[Werner Koch]

On Fri,  4 Jan 2008 10:59, nmav at gnutls.org said:

> This is mostly a question for libgcrypt developers, but I believe
> libgcrypt initializes the PRNG in a more conservative way.

Right, we even implement failsafe methods in case /dev/random does not
work like expected.  In fact we don't know ehther /dev/random is a good
RNG or not.  There is no serious study on the quality of /dev/random and
in the past we have seen major over-estimations on the available
entropy.

The problem with exim is that it does not use a random seed file which
greatly helps libgcrypt to initializes its internal pool.  I recall that
we discussed this quite some time ago.  I just looked at the current Sid
source of Exim and I can't find any call to libgcrypt.  IIRC, gnutls
does not cope with global libcgrypt setting and thus there is no saving
of a seend file.  

Exim should properly intialize libgcrypt and create a random seed file.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner


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