Re: [Tails-dev] haveged quality test in Virtual Box

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Autor: Abel Luck
Data:  
A: tails-dev
Assumpte: Re: [Tails-dev] haveged quality test in Virtual Box
adrelanos:
> Hi!
>
> Quoted form the haveged testing page [1]:
> "[...] will behave similarly in a virtual environment is a more risky
> proposition [...] there have been reports of VM that implement the
> processor time stamp counter as a constant and there are known
> differences in cpuid operation in others. [...]"
>
> (Note the runtime checking is not yet available in the haveged Debian
> package since the Debian package has not yet been updated to the latest
> haveged version.)
>
> Will haveged create sufficient entropy in Virtual Box? Luckily, haveged
> comes with tools to check the if the entropy it creates.
>
> The README in the haveged source folder and the haveged website [2]
> contains instructions [1] for testing haveged.
>
>     apt-get source haveged
>     cd haveged-*
>     ./configure --enable-nistest
>     make check

>
>     ## perhaps repeat
>     #make clean
>     #make check

>
> Should say something like
>
>     0 failed individual tests
>     PASS: nist/test.sh
>     ==================
>     All 2 tests passed
>     ==================

>
> The tests succeeded. The maintainer is very well aware of it and even
> included run-time checks in the latest version. I can not determine
> whether it's perfectly safe, but I can say: no known vulnerabilities.



I recently wrote a post about entropy collection for Qubes OS, which has
a similar problem (entropy starved VMs).

While writing the post I came across this great LWN article
https://lwn.net/Articles/525459/

Near the end it discusses HAVEGE with the startling point:

    "One of Peter's colleagues replaced the random
    input source employed by HAVEGE with a constant
    stream of ones. All of the same tests passed."