The havege functions in the polarssl package are currently disabled in the Fedora package. Newer releases of dolphin-emu, which are in a popular external repository, require these functions. According to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1069394#c1, the HAVEGE feature is disabled because it's "controversial" and "would lead to security problems", but the maintainer hasn't given any more explanation than that in the bug report. Is there any way we can get a second opinion on this? The external

On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 08:33 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Wed, Oct 01, 2014 at 08:52:03AM +0300, Jonathan Dieter wrote: >> The havege functions in the polarssl package are currently disabled >> in the Fedora package. Newer releases of dolphin-emu, which are in >> a popular external repository, require these functions. >> >> According to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1069394#c1, >> the HAVEGE feature is disabled because it's "controversial" and >> "would lead to security problems", but the maintainer hasn't given >> any more explanation than that in the bug report. >> >> Is there any way we can get a second opinion on this? The external > Yes there is. Since the objection is potentially security related, it would > be good to get the input of the Fedora Security Team (probably on the > security@ mailing list). Second, having had that conversation, if it still > goes nowhere, file a ticket with FESCo. Hello, Havege is an entropy gathering technique combined with a PRNG. I cannot really comment on the algorithm, but there is not significant analysis of the technique, and has not been published in a journal that is specialized for crypto or PRNGs. In any case, my opinion is not based on an analysis of the underlying algorithm, but rather on an idea on how the Fedora system's security features should be used. haveged and other daemons that feed entropy to kernel are useful, but a user space process in Fedora should not need an entropy gatherer. The system provides two and they are called /dev/urandom and /dev/random. By using these two we can always know that processes are sufficiently seeded. The only way to enforce that rule is by not allowing entropy gathering APIs in the system. So I'm on the keep this API disabled side, even though it's for a different reason. Is there a reason the processes that depend on the havege API to obtain entropy cannot use the system provided devices? My guess is that the processes simply need a PRNG. In that case doesn't the polarssl API offer a reasonable PRNG that is seeded from the system's devices? regards, Nikos

So, at this point, I think I'm going to desubmit (is that a word? unsubmit?) my request for a second opinion and won't be pursuing this any further. Apologies for any wasted time, and thanks Nikos for explaining what havege is and why it shouldn't be used in this context.