> From: Edward Ned Harvey (bouncycastle) > [mailto:bouncycas...@nedharvey.com] > > The default constructor of SecureRandom uses GetSeed(8), which is only 64 > bits, but worse yet, GetSeed seeds itself from the system clock Ticks.
I am sorry - I just stepped through code for the nineteenth time, and I just discovered I was wrong. YES, it's bad to use time as seed to prng, NO that's not all bouncy castle does. In fact, BC SecureRandom has a static instance called Master, which is seeded from Ticks and ThreadedSeedGenerator. The "SetSeed" method is confusing because it only adds seed material from Ticks; does not reduce the strength of the already present seed. So I think this is actually ok. Yes it could be stronger, by additionally pulling from things like the OS CryptoApiGenerator in addition to ThreadedSeedGenerator and Ticks, but no, it's not a big bad problem as I thought. Sorry again, and thanks for discussion...
