Are GPG keys generated on windows as secure as ones generated on linux?

Question

Under linux you run out of system Entropy when trying to generate GPG keys unless you use /dev/urandom. Under windows, you get the speed of /dev/urandom without any tweaks. Does windows have that much extra entropy, or are the keys just less secure?

This is a link that discusses /dev/urandom generating less secure keys for those that aren't familiar with why this might be a problem. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnupg/+bug/706011

Answer 1

I would say it mostly depends on the entropy pool and how entropy is collected.

I found this:

Microsoft Windows releases newer than 95A feature the CryptoAPI (CAPI) API that gathers entropy in a similar fashion to Linux kernel's /dev/random.[11] Windows's CryptoAPI uses the binary registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\RNG\Seed to store a seeded value from all of its entropy sources.[12] Because CryptoAPI is closed-source, some free and open source software applications running on the Windows platform use other measures to get randomness. For example, GnuPG, as of version 1.06, uses a variety of sources such as the number of free bytes in memory that combined with a random seed generate the desired randomness it needs.[13] Programmers using CAPI can get entropy by calling CAPI's CryptGenRandom(), after properly initialising it

I hope it helps or points you in the right direction to follow.