The Linux Pseudorandom Number Generator Revisited

Patrick Lacharme (1) , Andrea Rock (2) , Vincent Strubel (3) , Marion Videau (4)

1 Equipe SAFE - Laboratoire GREYC - UMR6072
2 Cryptolog - Paris
3 ANSSI - Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information
4 CARAMEL - Cryptology, Arithmetic: Hardware and Software

The Linux pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) is a PRNG with entropy inputs which is widely used in many security related applications and protocols. This PRNG is written as an open source code which is subject to regular changes. It was last analyzed in the work of Gutterman et al. in 2006 [GPR06] but since then no new analysis has been made available, while in the meantime several changes have been applied to the code, among others, to counter the attacks presented in [GPR06]. Our work describes the Linux PRNG of kernel versions 2.6.30.7 and upwards. We detail the PRNG architecture in the Linux system and provide its first accurate mathematical description and a precise analysis of the building blocks, including entropy estimation and extraction. Subsequently, we give a security analysis including the feasibility of cryptographic attacks and an empirical test of the entropy estimator. Finally, we underline some important changes to the previous versions and their consequences.

Domaines: Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]

Patrick Lacharme, Andrea Rock, Vincent Strubel, Marion Videau. The Linux Pseudorandom Number Generator Revisited. 2012. ⟨hal-01005441⟩