Re: ssh, /dev/urandom

[Oystein Viggen <oysteivi@tihlde.org>]

* [Thomas Bushnell, BSG] 

> Ssh should provide a non-cryptographically secure mode (such as using
> hashes of the low time bits, for example) for use on systems without a
> real random bit source.

I believe it does even better, and provides a mode where it hashes the
output of "ps aux" and suchlike.  However, this mode has to be enabled
at compile time and the commands it uses probably tweaked a bit to fit
well into a GNU/Hurd system.

OpenSSH also provides support for EGD/prngd, which also has to be
enabled at compile time.  (oh, and last I checked (1-2 years ago),
Debian had no EGD or prngd packages, as they're pretty useless on Linux,
so somebody would have to package one of those, too).

Those wanting a good ssh package could spend their time writing a patch
for the ssh package to use one of these approaches on the Hurd, instead
of arguing about whether /bin/bash or /lib/libc.so.6 provides the best
randomness for /dev/urandom.

For the time being, telnet works quite well for me on my little home
network with a completely headless Debian GNU/Hurd system.

Oystein
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