[Whonix-devel] Efficacy of jitterentropy RNG in Xen?

Sat Apr 13 16:43:00 CEST 2019

Hello,

we at Qubes OS are wondering [1] about the efficacy of entropy daemons
like haveged and jitterentropyd in Xen.

One of the authors of haveged [0] pointed out if the hardware cycles
counter is emulated and deterministic, and thus predictable. He
therefore does not recommend using HAVEGED on those systems. Is this the
case with Xen counters?

Any differences in Xen dom0 vs Xen guests?

Kind regards,
Patrick

[1] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/673
[2]
https://github.com/BetterCrypto/Applied-Crypto-Hardening/commit/cf7cef7a870c1b77089b1bd6209ded6525b5a4e0#commitcomment-23006392