[openssl-dev] Plea for a new public OpenSSL RNG API

[Blumenthal, Uri - 0553 - MITLL]

    >> I would do exactly the opposite. “Normal” entropy is fetched from the default sources (/dev/urandom). But
    >> when a sensitive (aka long-term) keys are generated, a (portable :) hardware RNG is plugged in and used with
    >> RAND_add() equivalent. Reason – in my setup reliable trusted hardware RNG is not always on. If it were, I’d
    >> use it as the main entropy source and be done with it.
    >
    >    In general, I would agree with you. In our case, it was a requirement of the
    >   government to trust only the SmartCard RNG. Since we use it for VPN
    >   connections with SmartCard authentication this was no problem, because
    >   the SmartCard must be present in order to initiate the IKEv2 exchange. 

Ah, that makes a lot of difference. 

>  The only tricky part was to deal with temporary failures of the entropy source.
    
Did you experience that often? How did you deal with it?
    
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