Random Number Generator Recommendations for Applications

Re:Random Number Generator Recommendations for Applications by cbsmith on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @01:12PM (#36140805)

> Hear hear. There is, indeed, no such thing as running out of entropy in a modern PRNG's state.

Yes, of course. PRNG's are about producing random data from a seed. But /dev/random & /dev/urandom isn't just a PRNG.

> What we really want is to always have an RNG-seeded PRNG, and to always use the PRNG not the RNG.

Which is effectively what is going on with /dev/random & /dev/urandom

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Re:Random Number Generator Recommendations for Applications by tptacek on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @02:08PM (#36141593)

At the point where you're simply equating /dev/random and /dev/urandom, you're no longer really disagreeing with anybody here. The only difference between the two is that /dev/random keeps a metric on how many bits its vended, and blocks waiting for rekeying when that metric gets too high. That's more or less a nonsensical thing to do.

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Re:Random Number Generator Recommendations for Applications by cbsmith on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @06:01PM (#36144973)

I'm definitely not saying what /dev/random does makes sense. ;-)

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