On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 08:49:36 +0800, Enzo Michelangeli said: >> That's basically what /dev/urandom does, no? (Except that it has the >> undesirable side-effect of depleting the entropy estimate maintained >> inside the kernel.)
> This "entropy depletion" issue keeps coming up every now and then, but I > still don't understand how it is supposed to happen. If the PRNG uses a It is a practical issue: Using /dev/urandom to avoid waiting for a blocked /dev/random will let other processes wait infinitely on a blocked /dev/random. The Linux implementation of /dev/urandom is identical to /dev/random but instead of blocking, (as /dev/random does on a low entropy estimation) it continues to give output by falling back to a PRNG mode of operation. For services with a high demand of random it is probably better to employ its own PRNG and reseed it from /dev/random from time to time. Salam-Shalom, Werner --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]