drivers/net: Remove IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM flag from network drivers
The IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM flag is marked as deprecated and will be removed. Every input point to the kernel's entropy pool have to better document the type of entropy source it is. drivers/char/random.c now implements a set of interfaces that can be used for devices to collect enviromental noise. IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM will be replaced with these add_*_randomness exported functions. Network drivers are not a good source of entropy. They use as a source of entropy essentially a remote host. Which means that the source of entropy can be potentially controlled by an attacker. Also, with heavy workloads the entropy decreases due to less hardware interrupts happening thanks to irq mitigation and NAPI. If a system relies in its network interface as a entropy source it has a false sense of security. Systems that don't have devices whose drivers are good sources of entropy, should either use a hardware random number generator or feed the kernel's entropy pool from userspace using other sources of entropy such as EGD, video_entropyd, timer_entropyd and audio-entropyd. Signed-off-by: Javier Martinez Canillas <martinez.javier@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Showing
Please register or sign in to comment