Fixes#5849
In pull request #5503 a fallback was added which adds a random nonce of
security_strength/2 bits if no nonce callback is provided. This change raised
the entropy requirements form 256 to 384 bit, which can cause problems on some
platforms (e.g. VMS, see issue #5849).
The requirements for the nonce are given in section 8.6.7 of NIST SP 800-90Ar1:
A nonce may be required in the construction of a seed during instantiation
in order to provide a security cushion to block certain attacks.
The nonce shall be either:
a) A value with at least (security_strength/2) bits of entropy, or
b) A value that is expected to repeat no more often than a
(security_strength/2)-bit random string would be expected to repeat.
Each nonce shall be unique to the cryptographic module in which instantiation
is performed, but need not be secret. When used, the nonce shall be considered
to be a critical security parameter.
This commit implements a nonce of type b) in order to lower the entropy
requirements during instantiation back to 256 bits.
The formulation "shall be unique to the cryptographic module" above implies
that the nonce needs to be unique among (with high probability) among all
DRBG instances in "space" and "time". We try to achieve this goal by creating a
nonce of the following form
nonce = app-specific-data || high-resolution-utc-timestamp || counter
Where || denotes concatenation. The application specific data can be something
like the process or group id of the application. A utc timestamp is used because
it increases monotonically, provided the system time is synchronized. This approach
may not be perfect yet for a FIPS evaluation, but it should be good enough for the
moment.
This commit also harmonizes the implementation of the get_nonce() and the
get_additional_data() callbacks and moves the platform specific parts from
rand_lib.c into rand_unix.c, rand_win.c, and rand_vms.c.
Reviewed-by: Richard Levitte <levitte@openssl.org>
(Merged from https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/5920)
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