Re: Re: Still wondering about random numbers...

Doug McNaught wrote:

> Allan Engelhardt <allane@cybaea.com> writes:
>
> > On other motherboards, reading from /dev/random can stall
> > indefinitely.  This is not a Good Thing.  /dev/urandom is fine, but
> > not rally better than rand(3) or random(3).
>
> Wrong; it's still a lot better, especially if you have a reasonable
> amount of entropy coming in--/dev/urandom uses the same entropy pool
> as /dev/random and generates its data using a cryptographically secure
> hash function.  This is still a lot better (for crypto purposes) than
> the simple LCGs used in the standard C library functions.

Absolutely!  I had minor brain damage when I wrote the paragraph.  What I meant was:

"/dev/urandom is not really better than rand(3) or random(3) *in this situation* [i.e. when reads from /dev/random
stallsand there is no system entropy]" 

You don't get a lot of entropy from the standard /dev/random drivers on a system without users (pressing a key gives 10
bytesof entropy, moving the mouse ~8), but you do get a some so it is better. 

As you said.

Allan.