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Date:      Tue, 4 Aug 2009 17:34:31 +0100
From:      RW <rwmaillists@googlemail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Secure password generation...blasphemy!
Message-ID:  <20090804173431.52698379@gumby.homeunix.com>
In-Reply-To: <64c038660908031928v15a76d15g5599e6f3fef936e1@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <64c038660908031928v15a76d15g5599e6f3fef936e1@mail.gmail.com>

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On Mon, 3 Aug 2009 20:28:52 -0600
Modulok <modulok@gmail.com> wrote:

> However, wouldn't hashing bytes from /dev/random be quite secure? The
> hash function would cover any readily apparent patterns, if they were
> found to existed.

That's fine, the only issue is that hex digits lead to long passwords
for a given stength. 

Most password generators are OK, provided that they ultimately
derive a sufficiently strong seed  from /dev/random and don't do
anything stupid, this includes things like jot, which uses the
arc4random library.

The main problem is that there are still a few generators around, IIRC
sysutils/pwgen is one, that still seed from the time and the pid, so I
wouldn't use a generator unless I'd seen the source.



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