How to safely generate a random number

Re:How to safely generate a random number by DanBC on Tuesday February 25, 2014 @09:45PM (#7302489)

> For cryptography, you don’t usually want “true random”.

Wait what? I thought I wanted actually random numbers.

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Re:How to safely generate a random number by infogulch on Tuesday February 25, 2014 @09:49PM (#7302517)

I thought the same thing. This comment on crypto.stackexchange.com[1] shed a bit of light for me:

    Yup, entropy sources may even have a particular bias to bits valued 0 or 1.
    Normally you need at least a whitening technique to get something looking
    like a random number. Feeding that as a seed into a PRNG is certainly
    helping to get the right quality. Be careful not to confuse a source of
    entropy with a secure random number generator.

[1] http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/726/what-is-the-us...

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Re:How to safely generate a random number by tptacek on Tuesday February 25, 2014 @09:49PM (#7302513)

Chapter 9 of _Cryptography Engineering_ leads off with a dozen or so paragraphs on why crypto software doesn't use real random.

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Re:How to safely generate a random number by DanBC on Wednesday February 26, 2014 @08:17AM (#7304688)

Thank you, I shall do some more (and better) reading.

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