From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Oct 7 10:49:51 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id KAA13649 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 10:49:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sovcom.kiae.su (sovcom.kiae.su [193.125.152.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA13631; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 10:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: by sovcom.kiae.su id AA13864 (5.65.kiae-1 ); Mon, 7 Oct 1996 20:42:30 +0300 Received: by sovcom.KIAE.su (UUMAIL/2.0); Mon, 7 Oct 96 20:42:30 +0300 Received: (from ache@localhost) by nagual.ru (8.7.6/8.7.3) id VAA01397; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:41:20 +0400 (MSD) Message-Id: <199610071741.VAA01397@nagual.ru> Subject: random() fix explanation to avoid misunderstanding To: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD-hackers List), current@freebsd.org (FreeBSD-current) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:41:19 +0400 (MSD) From: "=?KOI8-R?Q?=E1=CE=C4=D2=C5=CA_=FE=C5=D2=CE=CF=D7?=" (Andrey A. Chernov) Organization: self X-Class: Fast X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At this moment I saw several own people misinterpretation of the fix like "make random generator better" or "change random distribution", etc. Here the correct answer: the fix NOT change random generator, it change SEEDING bug. Due to this bug given states algorithm is useless! I.e. it isn't needed at all to have initstate()/setstate() things with initial weak seeding formulae, because it breaks all following calculations. Netscape story is some sort of analogy: poor random number generator there make useless following good SSL algorithm. -- Andrey A. Chernov http://www.nagual.ru/~ache/