Michael Brown
445ac9fbdc
[netdevice] Use link-layer address as part of RNG seed
iPXE currently seeds the random number generator using the system
timer tick count. When large numbers of machines are booted
simultaneously, multiple machines may end up choosing the same DHCP
transaction ID (XID) value; this can cause problems.
Fix by using the least significant (and hence most variable) bits of
each network device's link-layer address to perturb the random number
generator. This introduces some per-machine unique data into the
random number generator's seed, and so reduces the chances of DHCP XID
collisions.
This does not affect the ANS X9.82-compatible random bit generator
used by TLS and other cryptography code, which uses an entirely
separate source of entropy.
Originally-implemented-by: Bernhard Kohl <bernhard.kohl@nsn.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>