tree df40d7c8e2bb93143a9a795509ab60f7da25f320
parent 0e08fff32fef8605bc083a867e7537fd0ca32e65
author Hanno Becker <hanno.becker@arm.com> 1566884838 +0100
committer Jaeden Amero <jaeden.amero@arm.com> 1567163815 +0100

HMAC DRBG: Split entropy-gathering requests to reduce request sizes

According to SP800-90A, the DRBG seeding process should use a nonce
of length `security_strength / 2` bits as part of the DRBG seed. It
further notes that this nonce may be drawn from the same source of
entropy that is used for the first `security_strength` bits of the
DRBG seed. The present HMAC DRBG implementation does that, requesting
`security_strength * 3 / 2` bits of entropy from the configured entropy
source in total to form the initial part of the DRBG seed.

However, some entropy sources may have thresholds in terms of how much
entropy they can provide in a single call to their entropy gathering
function which may be exceeded by the present HMAC DRBG implementation
even if the threshold is not smaller than `security_strength` bits.
Specifically, this is the case for our own entropy module implementation
which only allows requesting at most 32 Bytes of entropy at a time
in configurations disabling SHA-512, and this leads to runtime failure
of HMAC DRBG when used with Mbed Crypto' own entropy callbacks in such
configurations.

This commit fixes this by splitting the seed entropy acquisition into
two calls, one requesting `security_strength` bits first, and another
one requesting `security_strength / 2` bits for the nonce.

Fixes #237.