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Date:      Sun, 18 Jun 2000 20:51:50 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
To:        Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: mktemp() patch 
Message-ID:  <200006190251.UAA52694@harmony.village.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:46:09 %2B1000." <00Jun19.124610est.115250@border.alcanet.com.au> 
References:  <00Jun19.124610est.115250@border.alcanet.com.au>  <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006072338550.73192-100000@freefall.freebsd.org> <200006081724.TAA00705@grimreaper.grondar.za> <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> <200006190201.UAA52489@harmony.village.org> 

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In message <00Jun19.124610est.115250@border.alcanet.com.au> Peter Jeremy writes:
: On 2000-Jun-19 12:03:40 +1000, Warner Losh <imp@village.org> wrote:
: >In message <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" writes:
: >: Pseudo random numbers are so cheap (or they should be) that you 
: >: just don't want to try and 'optimize' here. It is much better to 
: >: be conservative and use a good PRNG until it *proves* to be very
: >: problematic.
: >
: >I disagree with this strongly.  PRNG have proven time and time again
: >to weaken security due to their less than random nature.  It is my
: >judgement that going down this path would be very bad, especially when 
: >cryptographically strong random number generators exist and are part
: >of the base FreeBSD system.  We should just use those...
: 
: The PRNG in question is arc4random() - which AFAIK rates as
: "cryptographically strong".  I don't believe that mktemp(3) warrants
: the use of /dev/random (or even /dev/urandom).

I think we're in agreement.  I had thought I read it as "use
random(3)" for some reason....

Warner


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