Hi Jakob, Thanks for the info. I didnt understand fully about this.Would you mind explaining this a little more may be with some example if u dont mind.
Thanks in advance. ________________________________ From: Jakob Bohm <jb-open...@wisemo.com> To: openssl-users@openssl.org Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 7:17 PM Subject: Re: ssleay_rand_add() why is this used? On 12/22/2011 2:04 PM, Ssl Group wrote: > Hi , > Can some one help me in understanding the use of this API >"ssleay_rand_add()" ??? > And one more thing, we have a "state_index" value used in this function. It > is Global Static function. > I dont find any where updating this value in the file. Can you please let me > know if i am wrong or where it will > get updated and what is the use of this state_index. > > ssleay_rand_add() is used if you have access to some good source of highly random enemy-unknown bits which the OpenSSL code is not looking at itself. With this function, you can feed those additional sources of random entropy into the OpenSSL random number generator, thus increasing the security of all operations that rely on the cryptographic unpredictability of the random numbers generated by OpenSSL, including SSL connections, key generation etc. etc. Because most modern computers suffer from a severe lack of good sources by default, the chance that you might have access to some non-standard improved source may be quite high, so the need for this function is far from hypothetical. I also believe/suspect that the OpenSSL code which tries to load commonly available sources of entry also calls this function as it does so, but I haven't looked at this code for many months and don't remember it right now. ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org
