Bug 241888

Summary: CVE-2007-2453 Slightly degraded pool mixing for entropy extraction
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Reporter: Marcel Holtmann <holtmann>
Component: kernelAssignee: Don Howard <dhoward>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Martin Jenner <mjenner>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: urgent    
Version: 5.0CC: dzickus, jburke, lsmid, lwang, security-response-team
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: RHSA-2007-0376 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-06-14 14:55:22 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Marcel Holtmann 2007-05-31 14:38:19 UTC 
The random number generator in Linux kernels 2.6.12 up to 2.6.22 contain a
broken implementation that prevents a proper manual seeding of the generator.
When a Linux system boots without much operator interaction, the entropy pool
may be in a predictable state.

This issue only affects systems without a real time clock (RTC), harddrive
activity or user input during boot time. For these system the manual seeding of
the random generator is the only way to guarantee a proper entropy pool as early
as possible.

All other systems are not affected since the Linux kernel creates a big enough
entropy pool at boot. The manual seeding is not needed on these systems and has
no effect in increasing the randomness of the generator.
Comment 1 Don Howard 2007-06-01 23:32:51 UTC 
A patch addressing this issue has been included in build 2.6.18-8.1.6.el5
Comment 4 Mike Gahagan 2007-06-08 19:42:27 UTC 
verified the patch is in and looks to already be well tested.
Comment 7 Red Hat Bugzilla 2007-06-14 14:55:22 UTC 
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2007-0376.html