On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 07:00:17AM +0200, Stephan Müller wrote: > > On that same idea, one could add an early_initramfs handler for entropy > > data. > > Any data that comes from outside during the boot process, be it some NVRAM > location, the /var/lib...seed file for /dev/random or other approaches are > viewed by a number of folks to have zero bits of entropy. The Open BSD folks would disagree with you. They've designed their whole system around saving entropy at shutdown, reading it as early as possible by the bootloader, and then as soon as possible after the reboot, to overwrite and reinitialize the entropy seed stored on disk so that on a reboot after a crash. They consider this good enough to assume that their CRNG is *always* strongly initialized. I'll let you have that discussion/argument with Theo de Raadt, though. Be warned that he has opinions about security that are almost certainly as strong (and held with the same level of certainty) as a certain Brad Spengler... - Ted
