This is a reasonable use.. This can simply be implemented in the primitive 
where /dev/random is used. It would only need a HW check during initialization 
to enable using the DRNG or leave it as is in the event HW does not support it..

Michael Demeter
Staff Software Engineer
Open Source Technology Center - SSG
Intel Corporation



On Oct 3, 2012, at 4:30 AM, Wan-Teh Chang <w...@google.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Robert Relyea <rrel...@redhat.com> wrote:
>> 
>> But we can use it go seed the prng. There's a pretty easy way to get NSS to
>> use HW generated values to get some initial entropy: If you create a PKCS
>> #11 module that advertises a RNG (See the PKCS #11 spec), NSS will mix
>> entropy from it's own internal PRNG as well as extract random values to mix
>> into it's internal PRNG. Such a scheme would allow even old version of NSS
>> to benefit from HW RNGs.
>> 
>> As another step, there are a set of internal entropy collecting functions
>> within NSS that are platform specific called:
>> win_rand.c, unix_rand.c, and os2_rand.c. Mixing hardware generated bits into
>> the RNG_SystemRNG() call would pick up new HW generated entropy whenever NSS
>> decided it needs to reseed.
> 
> Yes, we can use it as an entropy source. I think the latter method is better.
> 
> I just verified that there is no DRBG validation certificate issued to Intel:
> http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/drbg/drbgval.html
> 
> So I think we can only use it as an entropy source.
> 
> Wan-Teh
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