Re: OpenSSL randomness seeding

> On 21 Jul 2020, at 17:31, David Steele <david(at)pgmasters(dot)net> wrote:
> On 7/21/20 8:13 AM, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:

>> Another thing that stood out when reviewing this code is that we optimize for
>> RAND_poll failing in pg_strong_random, when we already have RAND_status
>> checking for a sufficiently seeded RNG for us. ISTM that we can simplify the
>> code by letting RAND_status do the work as per 0002, and also (while unlikely)
>> survive any transient failures in RAND_poll by allowing all the retries we've
>> defined for the loop.
>
> I wonder how effective the retries are going to be if they happen immediately. However, most of the code paths I followed ended in a hard error when pg_strong_random() failed so it may not hurt to try. I just worry that some caller is depending on a faster failure here.

There is that, but I'm not convinced that relying on specific timing for
anything RNG or similarly cryptographic-related is especially sane.

cheers ./daniel