[ntp:questions] Re: using ntpd to feed the system's random device

John Pettitt jpp at cloudview.com
Fri Sep 23 00:59:16 UTC 2005


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Folkert van Heusden wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On some systems, there's a kernel random-device. That device collects
> entropy from numerous devices (like interrupts from disk i/o, keyboard
> clicks intervals, etc.). Now as it seems that the drift and the offsets
> can be pretty much random I was wondering it ntpd could be enhanced so
> that it sends this data to the kernel random-device? It can be helpfull
> for systems that, for example, hardly have any disk-i/o and such.
> 
> 
> Folkert van Heusden
> 
__

Huh?  I would have thought time is one of the least random things - I
know that my systems drift in a very predictable way with the
temperature - I can see when the heating kicks in and out on it's
thermostat in the data.  I don't think any of the data in ntp is
particularly random.

Also keep in mind that part of the game is to only use things that an
attacker can't manipulate or monitor so using ntp derived data is not
very helpful because the bad guys can get the same data.

John
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