Is fork() hook ever possible?

[David Schultz]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011, Andrey Chernov wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 03:58:55PM -0500, David Schultz wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 14, 2011, Andrey Chernov wrote:
> > > 1) We should use 
> > > 	mib[0] = CTL_KERN;
> > > 	mib[1] = KERN_ARND;
> > > 
> > > 	len = sizeof(rnd);
> > > 	sysctl(mib, 2, rnd, &len, NULL, 0);
> > > here instead of /dev/random, like OpenBSD did. It helps jails, and 
> > > re-stearing not happens too often in anycase. Obviously it minimizes 
> > > OpenBSD diffs too.
> > 
> > Yes, that was in my list of suggested follow-on work, but I don't
> > have time for it right now.
> 
> I can add this to your patch, we have the same semantics here as OpenBSD, 
> so there will be no surprizes.

Not quite.  OpenBSD's implementation is more careful.  I just
noticed a funny thing about FreeBSD's KERN_ARND sysctl: If the
random device isn't (or can't be) loaded, KERN_ARND silently
decides to initialize itself with the output of random().  This
means that whatever minuscule amount of entropy it might have
picked up from the clock is reduced to a maximum of 31 bits.
That's a fantastic way to provide a false sense of security...