[openssl-project] Random devices in chroot environments revisited

[Dr. Matthias St. Pierre]

Hi,

I'd like to recall that the following issue

    #7419 - RAND_keep_random_devices_open not working

still needs to be fixed until 1.1.1a and that currently there are two
alternative approaches for doing it:

    #7429 - Conditionally open random devices on initialization
    #7437 - rand_unix.c: open random devices on first use only 

A short recall of the background story: In pull request

    #6432 - Keep /dev/random open for seeding

a regression was fixed that affected applications in chroot environments.
It compensated the fact that the new OpenSSL CSPRNG now reseeds
periodically, which the previous one didn't.

The solution was to open all random devices early and keep them
open.  An API call (RAND_keep_random_devices_open()) was added
for the application to opt-out from this behaviour.

In issue #7419 it was reported that this opt-out did not work as expected.

*  Pull request #7429 fixes the opt-out issue but remains along the lines of
    the initial solution #7432. This approach has the side effect that the
    random devices are always opened, even if they are never used
    (for example, because getrandom() is available). Even more, if the
    application forks and execs, these handles will be left open and unused
    in the child process.

    An application which does not want this behavior, could explicitly opt-out,
    but this would require a recompilation, which is somewhat contrary to
    the assumptions of the initial chroot problem.

*  Pull request #7429 works without explicit opt-out, because it opens the
    random devices on first use only (and then keeps them open, unless
    the opt-out was called). The advantage of this approach: If getrandom()
    is available and working, the opening will never happen.

    The lazy opening does not add a regression for applications compiled
    against 1.1.0, because the old SSLEAY CSPRNG used to be initialized 
    on first use, too. So also with 1.1.0 it was necessary to initialize the
    CSPRNG properly before chrooting (unless the random device was
    mounted into the chroot jail).

Your thoughts?

Matthias