Re: Tempfile vulnerabilities

[schoen () LOYALTY ORG (Seth David Schoen)]

Ian Turner writes:

> > Can be so easy to DoS cryptographic software?
>
> Yes. If you don't trust your users to not deplete the entropy, then don't
> give them permission to read it.

An intermediate possibility is to have multiple RNGs with multiple sources
of entropy, or multiple RNGs with entropy divided among them somehow, or
a single RNG which enforces a reasonable policy of some sort when multiple
processes want to access it at once.

Modern multiuser operating systems have solved all _kinds_ of problems around
concurrency and dealing with contention over a shared resource.  There is
no reason that they should not be able to do exactly the same thing for an
entropy pool, if it becomes an issue.

--
Seth David Schoen <schoen () loyalty org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5