Dr. Stephen Henson wrote:
OpenSSL makes use of some standard sources of entropy on various platforms to
seed the PRNG automatically. On linux this includes the /dev/urandom device
and on Windows various things including the CryptoAPI PRNG.
OK, that explains, thanks.
The program is going to be distributed to clients who run a Windows
variant (2000, XP) or a unix-like OS (*BSD, Solaris, Linux, ...).
I reckon that /dev/urandom is present on most unices, so I can count on
the automatic PRNG seeding. However, on the Windows platforms I question
whether that is the case. Is CryptoAPI PRNG a standard component of the
OS which I can presume to be present?
("Network security with OpenSSL" mentions several times that Windows has
no built-in entropy-gathering mechanism that seeds a standard PRNG,
which is why the egads program was written.)
If not, I want to be able to detect whether the PRNG has been seeded
before OpenSSL complains. How would I do that?
TIA,
Erik Leunissen
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