From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Feb 27 12:27:37 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu [18.24.4.193]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E17D37B719 for ; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 12:27:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu) Received: (from wollman@localhost) by khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA78242; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 15:26:28 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wollman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 15:26:28 -0500 (EST) From: Garrett Wollman Message-Id: <200102272026.PAA78242@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> To: Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca Subject: Re: rand(3) (was Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random) In-Reply-To: <200102271952.f1RJqSs35224@cwsys.cwsent.com> References: Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science Cc: arch@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In article <200102271952.f1RJqSs35224@cwsys.cwsent.com> you write: >2. A more secure rand(). It is not rand's place to be secure. rand's only goal in life is to have reasonable statistical properties. Austin Group draft 5 makes the following requirement (inherited from X/Open): The rand( ) function shall compute a sequence of pseudo-random integers in the range 0 to {RAND_MAX} with a period of at least 232. There are other random-number generators which are intended to be secure. Applications which use random numbers in a security-sensitive context (e.g., key-generation or nonces) should not use this interface; there should probably be more explicit documentation to this effect. (Believe it or not, many real-world applications require only statistical randomness.) -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message