Shabsi Walfish wrote (quoting from the urandom(4) man page): > A read from the */dev/urandom* device will not block waiting for more > entropy. As a result, if there is not sufficient entropy in the entropy > pool, the returned values are theoretically vulnerable to a cryptographic > attack on the algorithms used by the driver. Knowledge of how to do > this is not available in the current non-classified literature, but it > is theoretically possible that such an attack may exist. If this is a > concern in your application, use */dev/random* instead.
This is total FUD. I've long complained about the fact that this is in the urandom(4) man page, as it leads to widespread misconceptions, but it's never been fixed. I don't want to waste the time of people on this mailing list deconstructing this statement in detail, so I'll just say: Please ignore this part of the /dev/urandom man page. It's bogus and not a good source for how to think about crypto-quality randomness. (To share an analogy, the quote above is analogous to saying "SSL is theoretically vulnerable to a cryptographic attack on the algorithms it uses. Knowledge of how to do this is not available in the non-classified literature, but it is theoretically possible that such an attack may exist. If this is a concern in your application, turn off your computer instead.") _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
