[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 2/2] configure: libbsd support for arc4random()

[Ganesh Ajjanagadde]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Ganesh Ajjanagadde <gajjanag at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 8:16 AM, Clément Bœsch <u at pkh.me> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 07:34:51AM -0500, Ganesh Ajjanagadde wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 7:27 AM, wm4 <nfxjfg at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> > On Sun,  6 Dec 2015 22:56:33 -0500
>>> > Ganesh Ajjanagadde <gajjanagadde at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> On non-BSD machines, there exists a package libbsd for providing BSD
>>> >> functionality. This can be used to get support for arc4random.
>>> >>
>>> >> Thus, an opt-in --enable-libbsd is added to configure for this
>>> >> functionality.
>>> >>
>>> >> Tested on GNU/Linux.
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > This doesn't seem worth the trouble at all. Who is even going to use
>>> > it, and why, and what additional hidden bugs will it cause?
>>>
>>> arc4random is a far superior interface, in that it can never fail. See
>>> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/entropy.txt for
>>> details.
>>> As for hidden bugs, apart from configuration/detection issues, I see none.
>>> If anything, it is easier to use /dev/urandom incorrectly.
>>> Ultimately any code change is a tradeoff, with different people
>>> feeling differently about various things.
>>> I still feel that it is worth inclusion due to its technical merits.
>>>
>>
>> Note that the behaviour of arc4random differs between implementations.
>>
>> http://insanecoding.blogspot.gr/2014/05/libressl-porting-update.html
>
> That is for libressl, not libbsd, though the remark may still apply.
> And there is no real fundamental issue: FFmpeg's seeding code anyway
> varies between platforms, in the worst case using time.

To clarify above: the seed is not meant for security anyway, since if
that was the case FFmpeg's seeding is fundamentally broken, falling
down to time is not safe. But this is clarified in the docs.

I also suspect arc4random is faster than /dev/urandom for seeding, and
may provide benchmarks iff this patch has a chance of getting
accepted.

Also, another reason this patch is potentially useful is because by
harnessing libbsd, one can access other things like arc4random_buf,
arc4random_uniform (for uniform distribution), etc.

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