Deprecate RAND_pseudo_bytes

The justification for RAND_pseudo_bytes is somewhat dubious, and the reality
is that it is frequently being misused. RAND_bytes and RAND_pseudo_bytes in
the default implementation both end up calling ssleay_rand_bytes. Both may
return -1 in an error condition. If there is insufficient entropy then
both will return 0, but RAND_bytes will additionally add an error to the
error queue. They both return 1 on success.
Therefore the fundamental difference between the two is that one will add an
error to the error queue with insufficient entory whilst the other will not.
Frequently there are constructions of this form:

if(RAND_pseudo_bytes(...) <= 1)
	goto err;

In the above form insufficient entropy is treated as an error anyway, so
RAND_bytes is probably the better form to use.

This form is also seen:
if(!RAND_pseudo_bytes(...))
	goto err;

This is technically not correct at all since a -1 return value is
incorrectly handled - but this form will also treat insufficient entropy as
an error.

Within libssl it is required that you have correctly seeded your entropy
pool and so there seems little benefit in using RAND_pseudo_bytes.
Similarly in libcrypto many operations also require a correctly seeded
entropy pool and so in most interesting cases you would be better off
using RAND_bytes anyway. There is a significant risk of RAND_pseudo_bytes
being incorrectly used in scenarios where security can be compromised by
insufficient entropy.

If you are not using the default implementation, then most engines use the
same function to implement RAND_bytes and RAND_pseudo_bytes in any case.

Given its misuse, limited benefit, and potential to compromise security,
RAND_pseudo_bytes has been deprecated.

Reviewed-by: Richard Levitte <levitte@openssl.org>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/crypto/RAND_bytes.pod b/doc/crypto/RAND_bytes.pod
index 1a9b91e281..f3a5ed22f8 100644
--- a/doc/crypto/RAND_bytes.pod
+++ b/doc/crypto/RAND_bytes.pod
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ RAND_bytes, RAND_pseudo_bytes - generate random data
 
  int RAND_bytes(unsigned char *buf, int num);
 
+Deprecated:
+
  int RAND_pseudo_bytes(unsigned char *buf, int num);
 
 =head1 DESCRIPTION
@@ -18,6 +20,7 @@ RAND_bytes() puts B<num> cryptographically strong pseudo-random bytes
 into B<buf>. An error occurs if the PRNG has not been seeded with
 enough randomness to ensure an unpredictable byte sequence.
 
+RAND_pseudo_bytes() has been deprecated. Users should use RAND_bytes() instead.
 RAND_pseudo_bytes() puts B<num> pseudo-random bytes into B<buf>.
 Pseudo-random byte sequences generated by RAND_pseudo_bytes() will be
 unique if they are of sufficient length, but are not necessarily