From owner-freebsd-security Sat Mar 3 20:11:44 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from obsecurity.dyndns.org (adsl-63-207-60-158.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net [63.207.60.158]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D5B8A37B718 for ; Sat, 3 Mar 2001 20:11:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: by obsecurity.dyndns.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 648B366B33; Sat, 3 Mar 2001 20:11:41 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 20:11:40 -0800 From: Kris Kennaway To: Joseph Gleason Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: random numbers Message-ID: <20010303201140.A75365@mollari.cthul.hu> References: <000b01c0a45c$edec3280$0b2d2d0a@fireduck.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-md5; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <000b01c0a45c$edec3280$0b2d2d0a@fireduck.com>; from clash@fireduck.com on Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 10:40:58PM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org --0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 10:40:58PM -0500, Joseph Gleason wrote: > Would /dev/urandom be acceptable for use in a one time pad encryption > system? Such a system is only as strong as the random number generator u= sed > to generate the keys. >=20 > I get the feeling that /dev/random would be a much better choice, but key > generation with that would be much slower. /dev/urandom would probably be okay, but for best results use /dev/random. > Does anyone know of any hardware that isn't to expensive and generates go= od > random numbers? I've read analyses of commercial RNG hardware which indicates they're often in fact not very good, in that the output isn't as random as claimed (but it's still fine to use as a source of entropy in a mixing function like what /dev/random does). YMMV. Kris --0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE6ocB8Wry0BWjoQKURAiM2AJ4mYLaCDUXLHk41hw1s9s16EnMd5gCcC2qz jw6SaFiLxjhdw9EZyzjV0js= =9m4P -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message