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Random number generators

badbug.id.au
1 pointycombinatorial91 comment
On HN

This post mostly makes sense but ughh. theoretically. for instance, /dev/random is almost useless because it blocks frequently. kind of moot.

Comments

Lot of things the author mentions isn't valid for practical world. Apache (with TLS/SSL) with /dev/random is asking for trouble; meaning, client's requests will just block forever if not enough seed cannot be generated (same with TLS/SSL aware postfix). A lot of software out there in use that require real-world RNG thus default to /dev/urandom. I am not sure whether its good or bad.

I know that on osx atleast, Yarrow kind of shields the fact that /dev/urandom and /dev/random produce non-blocking RNG.

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