Hi Jason,

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 2:44 AM Jason A. Donenfeld [off-list ref] wrote:

When RDRAND was introduced, there was much discussion on whether it
should be trusted and how the kernel should handle that. Initially, two
mechanisms cropped up, CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM, a compile time switch, and
"nordrand", a boot-time switch.

Later the thinking evolved. With a properly designed RNG, using RDRAND
values alone won't harm anything, even if the outputs are malicious.
Rather, the issue is whether those values are being *trusted* to be good
or not. And so a new set of options were introduced as the real
ones that people use -- CONFIG_RANDOM_TRUST_CPU and "random.trust_cpu".
With these options, RDRAND is used, but it's not always credited. So in
the worst case, it does nothing, and in the best case, maybe it helps.

Along the way, CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM's meaning got sort of pulled into the
center and became something certain platforms force-select.

The old options don't really help with much, and it's a bit odd to have
special handling for these instructions when the kernel can deal fine
with the existence or untrusted existence or broken existence or
non-existence of that CPU capability.

Simplify the situation by removing CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM and using the
ordinary asm-generic fallback pattern instead, keeping the two options
that are actually used. For now it leaves "nordrand" for now, as the
removal of that will take a different route.

Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Alexander Gordeev <agordeev@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <redacted>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Acked-by: Borislav Petkov <redacted>
Acked-by: Heiko Carstens <hca@linux.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>

Thanks for your patch, which is now commit 9592eef7c16ec5fb ("random:
remove CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM") upstream.

This change means everyone configuring a kernel will be asked this
question, even when configuring for an architecture that does not
support RNG instructions.

Perhaps this question should be hidden behind EXPERT?

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds