> Just an odd thought... > For routers, perhaps one could use random packets to provide the random > data for /dev/random? > Well, I told you it was an odd thought.
Probably not a good idea. You want guaranteed randomness mainly for security. Sending random data over the wire kind of defeats this, and although you could tunnel random data through ssh or something, you get into a chicken and egg problem, because ssh is generating session keys based (in part) on your random number generator, so while difficult, if someone knows the state of "randomness" on your machine, they can theoritically track (or at least drastically narrow the brute-force search space) other things on your system being derrived from the random number generator. When important, these problems are solved in "real" hardware (things like bank ATM machines and military crypto gear) by using hardware based random generators that are *truely* random (or at least meet specified levels of "randomness"). Such devices are typically based on something like the thermal noise of a resistor or diode, or similar physical properties, avoiding the predictability inherent in all seeded psudo-random number generators... Charles Steinkuehler http://lrp.steinkuehler.net http://c0wz.steinkuehler.net (lrp.c0wz.com mirror) _______________________________________________ Leaf-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user
