Re: [Python-Dev] BDFL ruling request: should we block forever waiting for high-quality random bits?

Nathaniel Smith <njs <at> pobox.com> writes:

In practice, your proposal means that ~all existing code that uses os.urandom becomes incorrect and should be switched to either secrets or random. This is *far* more churn for end-users than Nick's proposal.

This should only concern code that a) was specifically written for 3.5.0/3.5.1 and b) implements a serious cryptographic application in Python. I think b) is not a good idea anyway due to timing and side channel attacks and the lack of secure wiping of memory. Such applications should be written in C, where one does not have to predict the behavior of multiple layers of abstractions. Stefan Krah