Bug 1329516

Summary: nss: Failing to use /dev/urandom as source of randomness in container environment
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: Adam Mariš <amaris>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: emaldona, kdudka, kengert, nss-nspr-maint, rrelyea, slawomir, tjay
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-05-25 10:20:00 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Bug Depends On: 1329518    
Bug Blocks: 1329519    

Description Adam Mariš 2016-04-22 07:10:29 UTC
When running in container environment NSS may silently fail to use /dev/urandom as source of randomness and use substandard seeding methods, that can lead to improperly seeded random number generators.

Upstream bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1254334#c15

Comment 1 Adam Mariš 2016-04-22 07:10:55 UTC
Created nss tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1329518]

Comment 2 Bob Relyea 2016-04-23 01:22:35 UTC
I should point out that the upstream bug continues to use NSS semantics. NSS doesn't sielently fail, NSS falls back and seeds the random number generater with additional entropy. NSS does not run without entropy.

The upstream bug was not that the additional entropy was flawed. It was that the way the entropy was generated used a deprecated function in fedora. This bug should either be closed are renamed. (the upstream bug is now closed).

Comment 3 Trevor Jay 2016-05-25 09:55:45 UTC
On Current RHEL and Fed docker, /dev/urandom is made available by default exactly as present on the host system so this is not an issue for containers there as it is for other distros.