BaselineWatch
Desk
Your fleet and your work Fleetyour releases and the hardware they run onTriagewhat needs a decisionWatchlistthe products and platforms you runSaved searchesthe lists you come back to
This instance Sourceswhat is read, how often, under what termsDigestthe daily or weekly summary, and alerts
How it is drawn Appearancethe look and the colour schemeBrandingthe mark this instance wears
Owner sign-in

RHEL-09-211035 RHEL 9 must enable the hardware random number generator entropy gatherer service.

DISA STIG library V2R10
All changes in this version
first version loaded CAT III

Maps to CM-6 via CCI-000366

Title

RHEL 9 must enable the hardware random number generator entropy gatherer service.

Control

Note: For RHEL 9 systems running with kernel FIPS mode enabled as specified by RHEL-09-671010, this requirement is Not Applicable. Verify that RHEL 9 has enabled the hardware random number generator entropy gatherer service with the following command: $ systemctl is-active rngd active If the "rngd" service is not active, this is a finding.

Discussion

The most important characteristic of a random number generator is its randomness, namely its ability to deliver random numbers that are impossible to predict. Entropy in computer security is associated with the unpredictability of a source of randomness. The random source with high entropy tends to achieve a uniform distribution of random values. Random number generators are one of the most important building blocks of cryptosystems. The rngd service feeds random data from hardware device to kernel random device. Quality (nonpredictable) random number generation is important for several security functions (i.e., ciphers).

Related controls

CCI-000366

Fix

Install the rng-tools package with the following command: $ sudo dnf install rng-tools Then enable the rngd service run the following command: $ sudo systemctl enable --now rngd