[openssl-dev] Work on a new RNG for OpenSSL

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 02:34:49PM +0200, Tomas Mraz wrote:
> On Thu, 2017-08-17 at 12:22 +0000, Salz, Rich via openssl-dev wrote:
> > I understand the concern.  The issue I am wrestling with is strict
> > compatibility with the existing code.  Does anyone really *want* the
> > RNG’s to not reseed on fork?  It’s hard to imagine, but maybe
> > somewhere someone is.  And then it’s not about just reseeding, but
> > what about when (if) we add other things, like whether or not the
> > secure arena gets zero’d in a child?
> > 
> > So let me phrase it this way:  does anyone object to changing the
> > default so NO_ATFORK must be used to avoid the reseeding and other
> > things we might add later?
> 
> I can hardly see anyone would be broken if the default is to reseed
> RNG on fork. However that might not be true for other atfork
> functionalities so perhaps there is a need to make each of these future
> atfork functions configurable and either on or off by default
> individually and not as a whole.

There might be cases where after fork you're not able to get to
/dev/urandom anymore.


Kurt