Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Mark Murray wrote:

> > On the other hand, doing a dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null gives me
> > infinite "randomness" at 10MB/sec - have the semantics of /dev/random
> > changed?
> 
> Yes; remember that what we have here is Yarrow algorithm; which is an
> algorithm for cryptographically secure PRNG - one whose internal state
> is unguessable, or if compromised folr some reason is self-recovering.
> 
> "Infinite" randomness is possible with this algorithm.

On the other hand, didn't you say that at system boot the RNG is
essentially unseeded, so this is actually a liability because processes
cannot be sure they're getting real randomness.

Kris

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