Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel <at> zugschlus.de> writes: > > While debugging Exim4's GnuTLS interface, I recently found out that > reading from /dev/urandom depletes entropy as much as reading from > /dev/random would. This has somehow surprised me since I have always > believed that /dev/urandom has lower quality entropy than /dev/random, > but lots of it. > > This also means that I can "sabotage" applications reading from > /dev/random just by continuously reading from /dev/urandom, even not > meaning to do any harm.
An application either needs to be cryptographically secure, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then just use /dev/urandom to seed a PRNG. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
