Re: qmail starttls patch does not seed the random number generator

[Henning Brauer]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 10:22:10AM -0700, Scott Renfro wrote:
> On ''Unix'' platforms, it adds getpid(), getuid(), and time(NULL).
> Wagner and Goldberg demonstrated how very predictable these values were
> years ago with the Netscape browser.

At least for getpid() this is OS-dependent. On OpenBSD the pids aren't
predictable.

The point is still valid, though - pid, uid and time aren't random enough,
especially if you want to be somehow platform independent.

-- 
* Henning Brauer, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.bsws.de *
* Roedingsmarkt 14, 20459 Hamburg, Germany               *
Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity.
(Dennis Ritchie)