[PATCH] sethostname: dump new hostname into RNG

From: Jason A. Donenfeld
Date: Tue Sep 27 2022 - 05:40:57 EST


On some small machines with little entropy, a quasi-unique hostname is
sometimes a relevant factor. I've seen, for example, 8 character
alpha-numeric serial numbers. In addition, the time at which the hostname
is set is usually a decent measurement of how long early boot took. So,
call add_device_randomness() on new hostnames, which feeds its arguments
to the RNG in addition to a fresh cycle counter.

Low cost hooks like this never hurt and can only ever help, and since
this costs basically nothing for an operation that is never a fast path,
this is an overall easy win.

Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dominik Brodowski <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/sys.c | 1 +
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/kernel/sys.c b/kernel/sys.c
index b911fa6d81ab..7b7f973ea585 100644
--- a/kernel/sys.c
+++ b/kernel/sys.c
@@ -1366,6 +1366,7 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE2(sethostname, char __user *, name, int, len)
if (!copy_from_user(tmp, name, len)) {
struct new_utsname *u;

+ add_device_randomness(tmp, len);
down_write(&uts_sem);
u = utsname();
memcpy(u->nodename, tmp, len);
--
2.37.3