Re: [PATCH v3] random: add helpers for random numbers with given floor or range

From: Kees Cook
Date: Thu Nov 17 2022 - 16:48:24 EST


On Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 08:26:20PM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> Now that we have get_random_u32_below(), it's nearly trivial to make
> inline helpers to compute get_random_u32_above() and
> get_random_u32_inclusive(), which will help clean up open coded loops
> and manual computations throughout the tree.
>
> One snag is that in order to make get_random_u32_inclusive() operate on
> closed intervals, we have to do some (unlikely) special case handling if
> get_random_u32_interval(0, U32_MAX) is called. The least expensive way
> of doing this is actually to adjust the slowpath of
> get_random_u32_below() to have its undefined 0 result just return the
> output of get_random_u32(). We can make this basically free by calling
> get_random_u32() before the branch, so that the branch latency gets
> interleaved.
>
> Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>

I really like these -- unambiguous! :) Thanks for adjusting this API.

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

-Kees

--
Kees Cook