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saint_abroad | 4 years ago

Linux keeps track of "credit" for entrophy pool sources.

Anyone can write to /dev/random - this mixes data into the entrophy pool but it won't be "credited" as securely increasing /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail . https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/Entropy

Similarly, systemd-boot can seed from disk but will not "credit" entrophy. https://systemd.io/RANDOM_SEEDS/

If the point of /dev/random is to provide crytographically secure random numbers, then some level of paranoia is needed for determining which sources are "credited" for initializing the pool. https://lwn.net/Articles/760121/

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daneel_w|4 years ago

On OpenBSD only root can write to urandom, but anyone can provide entropy through for example disk i/o and keyboard input. I might be wrong, but I suspect the rationale is that if someone has root access to your system, you have plenty more to worry about besides the entropy pool.