Re: [PATCH v1 1/2] random-bits: Factor out entropy generating function

[Noah Goldstein <goldstein.w.n@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2022 at 10:00 AM Florian Weimer via Libc-alpha
<libc-alpha@sourceware.org> wrote:
>
> * Jason A. Donenfeld via Libc-alpha:
>
> > _However_, based on what people have said in this thread, this all
> > seems highly unnecessary, since you just need some boring
> > statistically uniform randomness without any crypto or security
> > requirements of any kind, and it simply needs to be fast and dumb. If
> > that's the wrong set of requirements for this problem (I still have no
> > idea what the bigger picture here is), please pipe up.
>
> If we can make a cryptographically secure generator fast enough, it
> would relieve programmers of the need to choose between that and another
> generator that just gives some random-looking bits fast.  If programmers
> don't have to make a choice, they can't choose incorrectly (introducing
> performance bugs or security bugs).

It sounds like you're talking about creating a user facing API. Since
random_bits
is internal do we really need so much ease of use at the cost of performance?
>
> For example, the system call overhead could be prohibitive for things
> like hash map keys if these hash maps are not used much before they are
> discarded again.
>
> Thanks,
> Florian
>