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

Salz, Rich rsalz at akamai.com
Mon Jun 26 18:57:19 UTC 2017


I was asked off-list why we're doing this.  A reasonable question. :)

There are many complains about the OpenSSL RNG.  For started:
	https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/2168
	https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/898
	https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/2457
	https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/3125

Also, there's things like this:
	It uses MD5
	It has a global pool, not per-thread so there's locking
	It doesn't use getrandom available on modern Linux systems
	It uses other bizarre private hashing and mixes in time and getpid

To summarize, perhaps, let's just say that it is really really outdated.  The state of the art has advanced, and we have some catching-up to do.



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