Proposed F19 Feature: Virtio RNG

[Jaroslav Reznik]

= Features/Virtio RNG =
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Virtio_RNG

Feature owner(s): Cole Robinson <crobinso at redhat.com>, Amit Shah 
<amit.shah at redhat.com>

Provide a paravirtual random number generator to virtual machines, to prevent 
entropy starvation in guests.  

== Detailed description ==
The linux kernel collects entropy from various non-deterministic hardware 
events, like mouse and keyboard input, and network traffic. This entropy is then 
exposed through /dev/random, commonly used by cryptographic applications that 
need true randomness to maintain security. However if more entropy is being 
consumed than is being produced, we have entropy starvation: reading from 
/dev/random will block, which can cause a denial of service. A common example 
here is use of /dev/random by SSL in various services.

VirtIO RNG (random number generator) is a paravirtualized device that is 
exposed as a hardware RNG device to the guest. Virtio RNG just appears as a 
regular hardware RNG to the guest, which the kernel reads from to fill its 
entropy pool. This effectively allows a host to inject entropy into a guest via 
several means: The default mode uses the host's /dev/random, but a physical HW 
RNG device or EGD (Entropy Gathering Daemon) source can also be used.