Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
This month in Kernel News: Opening a Random Can of Worms and Out with the Old.
Opening a Random Can of Worms
Torsten Duwe was mad as hell, and he wasn't going to take it anymore! Or at least, he had certain objections to /dev/random, which he felt should be addressed. In particular, one of the main points of random numbers in the Linux kernel is to support system security. Torsten pointed out that "Input entropy amounts are guesstimated in advance, obviously much too conservatively, compiled in and never checked thereafter; the whitening is done using some home-grown hash function derivative and other non-cryptographic, non-standard operations."
He also remarked with restraint and decorum, that "meanwhile there's quite a maintenance backlog; minor fixes are pending, medium-sized cleanups are ignored and major patch sets to add the missing features are not even discussed."
Torsten said he was in favor of bringing the Linux kernel up to some sort of standards compliance with regards to random numbers, preferably obtaining official certification from one of the organizations that did that sort of thing. But he said he'd settle for /dev/random simply being a reliable source of entropy, even without any certification.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.