The new non-blocking system introduced in commit e192be9d9a30 ("random: replace non-blocking pool with a Chacha20-based CRNG") can under some circumstances report itself initialized while it still contains dangerously little entropy, as follows: Approximately every 64th call to add_interrupt_randomness(), the "fast" pool of interrupt-timing-based entropy is fed into one of two places. At calls numbered <= 256, the fast pool is XORed into the primary CRNG state. At call 256, the CRNG is deemed initialized, getrandom(2) is unblocked, and reading from /dev/urandom no longer gives warnings. At calls > 256, the fast pool is fed into the input pool, leaving the CRNG untouched. The problem arises between call number 256 and 320. If crng_initialize() is called at this time, it will overwrite the _entire_ CRNG state with 48 bytes generated from the input pool. But the add_interrupt_randomness() entropy was never _in_ the input pool, so instead we destroy all of add_interrupt_randomness()'s hard work and replace it with the possibly feeble entropy from a few calls to add_device_randomness(), init_std_data(), etc. Nevertheless crng_ready() will happily inform us that getrandom(2) and /dev/urandom are ready to go. This state of affairs will continue until the next call to crng_reseed() dumps more entropy into the CRNG and _that_ won't happen until the input pool entropy estimate exceeds 128 bits. On a system with no rotational drives and little or no user input it could be a long wait (minutes). Dumping /var/foo/random-seed into /dev/urandom won't help here because that only adds entropy to the pool without increasing the estimate. In short, the situation is: A) No usable hardware RNG or arch_get_random() (or we don't trust it...) B) add_interrupt_randomness() called 256-320 times but other add_*_randomness() functions aren't adding much entropy. C) then crng_initialize() is called D) not enough calls to add_*_randomness() to push the entropy estimate over 128 (yet) E) getrandom(2) or /dev/urandom used for something important Based on a few experiments with VMs, A) through D) can occur easily in practice. And with no HDD we have a window of about a minute or two for E) to happen before add_interrupt_randomness() finally pushes the estimate over 128 on its own. The fix is simple enough: XOR the input pool randomness into the CRNG state instead of overwriting it. Fixes: e192be9d9a30 ("random: replace non-blocking pool with a Chacha20-based CRNG") Signed-off-by: Alden Tondettar <alden.tondettar@xxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/char/random.c | 10 ++++++---- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/char/random.c b/drivers/char/random.c index 1ef2640..bda30df 100644 --- a/drivers/char/random.c +++ b/drivers/char/random.c @@ -777,20 +777,22 @@ static void crng_initialize(struct crng_state *crng) { int i; unsigned long rv; + __u32 tmp[12]; memcpy(&crng->state[0], "expand 32-byte k", 16); if (crng == &primary_crng) - _extract_entropy(&input_pool, &crng->state[4], - sizeof(__u32) * 12, 0); + _extract_entropy(&input_pool, tmp, sizeof(__u32) * 12, 0); else - get_random_bytes(&crng->state[4], sizeof(__u32) * 12); + get_random_bytes(tmp, sizeof(__u32) * 12); for (i = 4; i < 16; i++) { if (!arch_get_random_seed_long(&rv) && !arch_get_random_long(&rv)) rv = random_get_entropy(); - crng->state[i] ^= rv; + crng->state[i] ^= tmp[i - 4] ^ rv; } crng->init_time = jiffies - CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL - 1; + + memzero_explicit(tmp, sizeof(tmp)); } static int crng_fast_load(const char *cp, size_t len) -- 2.1.4