Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:51:18 -0800 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 00/11] random: code cleanups |
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On 11/12/2013 08:37 PM, Greg Price wrote: > > I'm thinking only of boot-time blocking. The idea is that once > /dev/urandom is seeded with, say, 128 bits of min-entropy in the > absolute, information-theoretic sense, it can produce an infinite > supply (or something like 2^128 bits, which amounts to the same thing) > of bits that can't be distinguished from random, short of breaking or > brute-forcing the crypto. So once it's seeded, it's good forever. >
And, pray tell, how will you know that you have done that?
Even the best entropy estimation algorithms are nothing but estimations, and min-entropy is the hardest form of entropy to estimate.
-hpa
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