I did notice that, as I stated before. But the function is named 'random seed', which implies it is to seed an RNG, *not* that is in an RNG. I think this could leave people to conclude the sequence will be cryptographically sucure. So whilst I'm not disagreeing with what you say, and agree the documetation is correct in what it says, I believe there's a big chance for confusion. It should state this seed is cryptographically secure, but any sequence generated using an RNG which is seeded by this, it will not be.
On 21 October 2012 12:26, Dima Pasechnik <dimp...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2012-10-21, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: >> http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/sage/misc/randstate.html >> >> says: >> >> "If set_random_seed() is called with no arguments, then a new seed is >> automatically selected. On operating systems that support it, the new >> seed comes from os.urandom(); this is intended to be a truly random >> (not pseudo-random), cryptographically secure number. (Whether it is >> actually cryptographically secure depends on operating system details >> that are outside the control of Sage.)" >> >> I agree /dev/urandom will give a truely random seed, but the numbers >> generated from that seed will still be psuedo random, and not truely >> random, so they are not suitable for cryptographic purposes. > > The paragraph you cite does not claim anything about the resulting > pseudo-random sequences. > > Dima > >> >> Dave >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
