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Bug 241888

Summary:	CVE-2007-2453 Slightly degraded pool mixing for entropy extraction
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	Marcel Holtmann <holtmann>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Don Howard <dhoward>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Martin Jenner <mjenner>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	urgent
Version:	5.0	CC:	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:		Story Points:	---
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