Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:46:09 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au> To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mktemp() patch Message-ID: <00Jun19.124610est.115250@border.alcanet.com.au> In-Reply-To: <200006190201.UAA52489@harmony.village.org>; from imp@village.org on Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 12:03:40PM %2B1000 References: <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006072338550.73192-100000@freefall.freebsd.org> <200006081724.TAA00705@grimreaper.grondar.za> <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> <200006190201.UAA52489@harmony.village.org>
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On 2000-Jun-19 12:03:40 +1000, Warner Losh <imp@village.org> wrote: >In message <394124C3.221E61BC@vangelderen.org> "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" writes: >: Pseudo random numbers are so cheap (or they should be) that you >: just don't want to try and 'optimize' here. It is much better to >: be conservative and use a good PRNG until it *proves* to be very >: problematic. > >I disagree with this strongly. PRNG have proven time and time again >to weaken security due to their less than random nature. It is my >judgement that going down this path would be very bad, especially when >cryptographically strong random number generators exist and are part >of the base FreeBSD system. We should just use those... The PRNG in question is arc4random() - which AFAIK rates as "cryptographically strong". I don't believe that mktemp(3) warrants the use of /dev/random (or even /dev/urandom). Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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