[Announce] Libgcrypt 1.8.4 released

[Werner Koch]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2018 17:29, dkg at fifthhorseman.net said:

> right, but the release notes say it uses the /dev/urandom *behavior*,
> not the urandom *pool*.  the /dev/urandom behavior is still:

Come on, why this nitpicking for release notes virtually nobody reads.
The use of the /dev/urandom (blocking or not) is the real change because
it changes the security properties we assume in certain use cases of
GnuPG (gpg4vs-nfd project).  This is not a technical but a security
policy question.

> I'm assuming that "the early boot phase" means "until the crng is
> initialized".  On minimalist virtual machines that use a modern system
> supervisor that has relatively short boot times, it can be a

Even with a full failing /dev/urandom we still have sufficient entropy
From RDRAND and the JitterRNG.  In fact the JitterRNG is the only
measurable and thus valid entropy source we have on Windows.  And we use
it on Linux as well for some fraction of the overall entropy fed into
Libgcrypt's pool.

> rather than harms them, because it removes unnecessary blocking while
> avoiding exposing the user to use of an unintialized RNG.  so as long as

There won't be an uninitialized RNG just due to a failing /dev/random in
1.8.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.
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