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Replying to and
Current pools of entropy are collecting, mouse, keystrokes, operations timeouts, and recycles using CHACHA20. By the time you started your computer, you already did mouse moves, keyboard strokes, etc. So unless they have their own PRNG that uses them, there is no reason for msg.
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Replying to and
Entropy isn't depleted by having a CSPRNG generate random data. Using the nonsensical Linux /dev/random API instead of getrandom() is a bug. Other operating systems like OpenBSD don't provide a faulty /dev/random implementation at all. It really shouldn't be used on Linux at all.
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Linux /dev/urandom is faulty and returns data before being initialized. Linux /dev/random API is faulty and uses a nonsensical cargo cult design blocking after initialization without providing meaningful security properties from it. Software not using getrandom() is just broken.
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Replying to and
It's completely accurate and you're just misinterpreting what I said and making a strawman argument. I never said it used a different pool than urandom but rather than the API is sane since it won't ever return data when uninitialized. I clearly explained it in the other thread.
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The /dev/random API is a nonsense concept not based on any real threat model, security rationale or cryptographic basis. It doesn't actually provide a property like better backwards secrecy. It doesn't make sense to use it either via the legacy file API or the getrandom flag.
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The first boot matters, and there isn't necessarily enough entropy generated even for use during the subsequent boots. Many of the real world issues caused by low entropy keys occurred on embedded devices during the initial boot. They generate keys on first boot to start working.
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It's also important to note that the Linux man pages are not an authoritative source and have often been inaccurate. Look at `man 4 random` on an up-to-date distribution (which says what I did) and compare it to the totally inaccurate cargo cult advice it gave in the recent past.
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