Re: Secure random ID generation

From: John Viega (viegaat_private)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 23:43:30 PST

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    The PRNG isn't the hard part.  Seeding it securely (and continually 
adding entropy to its state) is the hard part.
Simply operating a cryptographic primitive in counter mode produces a 
cryptographically strong PRNG (not hard in the slightest), but the 
entropy of the seed is absolutely crucial.

John

On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 07:26 PM, Jose Nazario wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Dec 2002 Valdis.Kletnieksat_private wrote:
>
>> Not all systems have a /dev/random.
>
> secure, portale (ie userland) entropy gathering daemons exist. however,
> most languages have some form of a PRNG. its a lot easier than trying 
> to
> write your own.
>
> ___________________________
> jose nazario, ph.d.			joseat_private
> 					http://www.monkey.org/~jose/
>

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