provide a mechanism to mark a custom getrandom implementation as being SecureRandom

[japaric]

Context: I'm working on adding no-std support to rustls and as part of that I'm building a small no-std demo that uses libc (instead of libstd) to perform networking. I'm using the "OS agnostic" x86_64-unknown-none target, which lacks a std implementation, to ensure libstd doesn't get sneakily used by a dependency but the demo will run on x86_64 Linux (for simplicity of testing it on CI but the demo should run on any (RT)OS that has a POSIX layer but lacks a libstd port).

I'm trying to use ring as the cryptographic backend of rustls in no-std mode and I'm able to build rustls with the ring Cargo feature enabled and the "std" feature disabled (WIP PR: rustls/rustls#1502) for the x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu target but the build fails for the x86_64-unknown-none target. I have tracked down the issue to this SecureRandom implementation:

ring/src/rand.rs

Lines 127 to 149 in 2e8363b

	#[cfg(any(
	target_os = "android",
	target_os = "dragonfly",
	target_os = "freebsd",
	target_os = "haiku",
	target_os = "illumos",
	target_os = "ios",
	target_os = "tvos",
	target_os = "linux",
	target_os = "macos",
	target_os = "netbsd",
	target_os = "openbsd",
	target_os = "redox",
	target_os = "solaris",
	target_os = "windows",
	target_os = "vita",
	all(
	feature = "wasm32_unknown_unknown_js",
	target_arch = "wasm32",
	target_os = "unknown",
	),
	))]
	impl sealed::SecureRandom for SystemRandom {

The x86_64-unknown-none target has its "target_os" set to "none" so it doesn't match any of those conditionals. That means the SystemRandom type cannot be used with API like RsaKeyPair::sign and EphemeralPrivateKey::generate , which rustls uses when configured to use ring as its default crypto provider.

Would it be possible for ring to provide a mechanism to mark a custom SystemRandom as being SecureRandom? As of ring v0.17.0, one can enable getrandom's "custom" feature to provide a custom getrandom implementation which is what SystemRandom uses. My demo will run on Linux so my custom getrandom implementation is the same as the x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu implementation so it's also a "secure" getrandom implementation.

Perhaps a Cargo feature can be used as the mechanism? Similar to rustls' "dangerous" Cargo feature. Let's say "secure-custom-getrandom":

# *ring*'s Cargo.toml
[features]
secure-custom-getrandom = ["getrandom/custom"]

// ring/src/rand.rs
#[cfg(any(
    feature = "secure-custom-getrandom",
    target_os = "android",
    // ..
))]
impl sealed::SecureRandom for SystemRandom { /* .. */ }

I think adding the feature = at the any level is fine because getrandom's documentation states that custom implementations only have an effect on unsupported targets so you cannot, for example, override the Linux getrandom implementation.

[briansmith]

As part of the FIPS project we'll likely implement a CSPRNG within ring that then only requires an entropy source. Then we'll likely provide a pluggable API for the entropy source. Not too different from getrandom. If you want to help with creating this, I would be happy to collaborate with you on it.

[briansmith]

Also, please see #1406 (review) where I describe a mechanism to use getrandom as-is without building the FIPS-compliant CSPRNG, by introducing a new less-safe-getrandom-rdrand feature. I believe this will get you what you need for targetting X86-64 if you are happy with RDRAND.

[briansmith]

Also, please see #1406 (review) where I describe a mechanism to use getrandom as-is without building the FIPS-compliant CSPRNG, by introducing a new less-safe-getrandom-rdrand feature. I believe this will get you what you need for targetting X86-64 if you are happy with RDRAND.

We can do something just like less-safe-getrandom-rdrand but for getrandom's custom feature: add a less-safe-getrandom-custom feature to ring which would then activate get getrandom's custom feature. This is how getrandom supports the kinds of environments you seem to be targeting; see register_custom_getrandom!.

[japaric]

We can do something just like less-safe-getrandom-rdrand but for getrandom's custom feature: add a less-safe-getrandom-custom feature to ring which would then activate get getrandom's custom feature.

this is more or less what I had in mind. I'll prepare a PR

[japaric]

this is more or less what I had in mind. I'll prepare a PR

submitted PR #1754