[[!meta title="Seeding the random number generator"]] [[!toc levels=2]] # Introduction `/dev/random` and `/dev/urandom` are special Linux devices that provide access from user land to the Linux kernel Cryptographically Secure Pseudo Random Number Generator (CSPRNG). This generator is used for almost every security protocol, like key generation (TLS, [OpenPGP](https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/086.pdf), LUKS), picking nodes for Tor circuits, choosing TCP sequences, ASLR offsets. In order for this CSPRNG to indeed be cryptographically secure, it's recommended to seed it with a 'good' entropy source, even though The Linux kernel collects entropy from several sources, for example keyboard typing, mouse movement, among others. Because of Tails' feature of being amnesic, and run from different types of live devices (from DVDs to USB sticks), special care must be taken to ensure the system gets enough entropy and boots with enough randomness. This proves to be hard within the Tails context, where the system is almost always booting the same way. Even the SquashFS is ordered to optimize boot time. Although these problems have been documented since a long time (see <https://www.av8n.com/computer/htm/secure-random.htm> and <http://www.av8n.com/computer/htm/fixup-live-cd.htm>), there's not much done to tackle the problem. We looked at notes and research from LiveCD OS's and supply them here for completeness' sake. Whonix has a [wiki page](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/Entropy) with some notes, and Qubes has tickets about this [Qubes 673](http://wiki.qubes-os.org/trac/ticket/673), [Qubes 1311](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1311), [Qubes devel](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-devel/Q65boPAbqbE/9ZOZUInQCgAJ), [Qubes devel](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-devel/5wI8ygbaohk). # Current situation See the related [[design document|contribute/design/random]] Tails does not ship `/var/lib/urandom/random-seed` in the ISO, since it means shipping a fixed known value for every Tails installation, which in turn means that entropy contribution would be zero. Furthermore, this breaks reproducibility of the ISO image. Without this random seed, `systemd-random-seed` won't write anything to `/dev/urandom`, so we rely purely on the kernel CSPRNG and current system entropy to get `/dev/urandom`. It's commonly admitted to be quite good, but given the Live nature of Tails, and the fact that good cryptography is a must, we may want to add additional measures to ensure any Tails system has enough entropy. Tails ships Haveged and rngd since a while. Still there are concerns about Haveged's reliability to provide cryptographically secure randomness, and rngd is only really useful when random generator devices are used. Taking other measures to seed the Linux Kernel CSPRNG with good material seems worth spending efforts on. # Use cases Tails is used in different ways with different live devices. That requires different solutions, depending on how and what the Tails OS is installed. ## USB That's the best supported way to use Tails. Note that in this case, there are two situations: booting this installation with persistence enabled, and without. It is worth noting that the first time this Tails installation is booted, most of the time the first step is to configure persistence, which means creating an encrypted partition. At this step though, there is probably very little entropy at this moment, which may weaken the LUKS volume encryption ([[!tails_ticket 16891]]). ## Virtual Machines (ISO image as virtual DVD ) Tails supports booting virtual machines from ISO images. Starting Tails from a DVD on bare metal is not supported anymore since Tails 3.12 ([[!tails_ticket 15292]]). This may be the most difficult, since all that the user is running is the plain ISO we provide. In there, there's no seed at all. It is of public knowledge that entropy in VMs is very poor. It's not really clear how the entropy gathering daemons we have would help. On the other hand, that's not the installation method we want to support the most, and probably not the most used when people want to secure other communication types than HTTPS (e.g persistence is very useful for OpenPGP key storage and usage, chat account configuration, ...). To safely use Tails in a virtual machine, one needs to provide randomness from the host system to the guest Tails virtual machine, for example using the Virtio RNG feature (even if it may not be enough by itself). XXX: is this possible with VirtualBox? # Proposed solutions ## Random value on the kernel command-line On recent enough Linux kernels, such as the one used in Tails, the content of the kernel command line is used as a source of randomness. We can thus write a random value there in the bootloader configuration on first boot, and then update it on every subsequent boot and clean shutdown, similarly to an initial seed that Tails Installer would write on the system partition. This is WIP on [[!tails_ticket 11897]]. ## Random value stored in an unused sector We can write a random value in an unused sector (e.g. LBA 34) on first boot, and here again, update it on every subsequent boot and clean shutdown. This is WIP on [[!tails_ticket 11897]]. ## Use the Tails Installer to create a better seed Tails Installer is used from within Tails to: - Clone the running Tails device onto another USB stick, for example in order to upgrade the latter. - Upgrade another Tails USB stick from an ISO image. Tails Installer could store a seed in the FAT filesystem of the system partition. That would workaround this first boot problem not handled by the persistence option. This seed can be updated both during early boot (initramfs) and during regular system shutdown. This means remounting this partition read-write, writing the new random seed, then respectively remounting it read-only and unmounting it. Obviously we can do this only in normal shutdown process, and we'll have to avoid it in emergency shutdown mode. This is WIP on [[!tails_ticket 11897]]. We may alternatively not update it, and use it only when the persistence is not enabled. That would still be a unique source of entropy per Tails installation, so that would be a better situation than the current one. ## Use stronger/more entropy collectors [[!tails_ticket 5650]] As already stated, Tails runs Haveged and rngd. We may want to add other sources though, given there are concerns about Haveged, and rngd starts only when a hardware RNG is detected, which is not so often the case. XXX: It would be nice to have a study (read: a survey of packages, etc) of all the useful entropy gathering daemons that might be of use on a Tails system (and have this tested on computers with/without Intel RDRAND or things like an Entropy Key). An evaluation of some of them [has been done already](https://volumelabs.net/best-random-data-software/) Possible candidates: * [entropy gathering daemon](http://egd.sourceforge.net/): not packaged into Debian. * [twuewand](http://www.finnie.org/software/twuewand/): used by Finnix LiveCD (so made for this kind of environment), not in Debian. * [timer entropy daemon](https://www.vanheusden.com/te/): not packaged into Debian * randomsound: probably a bad idea in the Tails context as we're discussing a Greeter option to deactivate the microphone. ## Block booting until enough entropy has been gathered One way to ensure Tails is booting with enough entropy would be to block the boot while the system is lacking it. But this brings questions about how to interact correctly with the users, as blocking without notifications would be terrible UX. Also Tails boot time is a bit long already, and this may grow it quite a bit more again. XXX: will enough entropy be gathered on such a blocked, idling system? XXX: So before going on, we need a bit more data about the state of the entropy when Tails boots, especially now that we have several entropy collector daemons. It may very well be that this case does not happen anymore. And if it does, we need to know on average how much time that blocking would last. [[!tails_ticket 11758]] ## Regularly check available entropy and notify if low An idea that has been mentioned several times is to have a service that checks if the available entropy is high enough, and notifies the user if it's not the case. One downside is, that observing the entropy pool costs randomness, so this may have to be implemented with care or is worth discussing/researching the costs/benefits. XXX: why does observing the entropy pool cost randomness? Does reading `/proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize` and `/proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail` impact the amount of estimated entropy available? # Abandoned solutions ## Persist entropy pool seeds [[!tails_ticket 7675]] For users who enable the persistent storage option, we could store there a seed from the previous session to help bootstrap with some "well" generated randomness. Storing it in the persistent partition could be implemented using a default (hidden to the user) persistence setting. But it does not solve the problem for the first time Tails is booted, which is likely when the encrypted persistence partition is created. And meanwhile, we have found ways to get the same benefits for every Tails USB stick, with or without persistence (WIP on [[!tails_ticket 11897]]). # Related tickets This is about [[!tails_ticket 7642]], [[!tails_ticket 7675]], [[!tails_ticket 6116]], [[!tails_ticket 11897]] and friends. # Also see * [Schleuder thread about haveged](https://0xacab.org/schleuder/schleuder/issues/194) * The [federal office for IT security in Germany analysed the rng in linux kernel 4.9 and all changes made up to 4.17](https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/BSI/Publications/Studies/LinuxRNG/LinuxRNG_EN.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=10). * [checking for available entropy](https://salsa.debian.org/tookmund-guest/pgpcr/issues/16) * <https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/338.pdf> * <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0506/> * <https://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.urandom>

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