Linux 5.6 Seeing Random Changes, New “Insecure” Option With GRND_INSECURE

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The recent work by longtime kernel developer Andy Lutomirski on improving Linux’s random APIs and introducing a new “GRND_INSECURE” option is now queued into the random dev queue ahead of the Linux 5.6 cycle.

These changes to the random number generation add a new GRND_INSECURE flag for getentropy() and removes the blocking pool (though /dev/random can still block after the system has booted). These changes provide for some code cleanups and GRND_INSECURE allows returning potentially “insecure” random data.

[Source: Phoronix]