random

[Gerrie Roos]

In encryption, it is imperative to have access to a verry, verry good random
generator for generating keying material, nonces and initialization
vectors...any predictability in random material can swing things in favour of
an attacker trying to decypher your communications.

"David C. Ullrich" wrote:

> On Thu, 31 May 2001 08:17:18 -0400, "Bill Bell"
> <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
> >> Bas van Gils <bas.vangils at home.nl> spake:
> >> One of the things that I'm concerned
> >> about is this random-ness. My > teacher (actually a nice guy :)
> >> explained to us that not all > random-number-generators are "good",
> >> and that this selection process > *must* *be* *random*. So, my
> >> question: how random is the > random-number-generator that python
> >> uses?
> >>
> >> "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
> >> numbers is, of course, in a state of sin." -John Von Neumann
> >>
> >> Unless you have random-number-generating hardware, you don't really
> >> have truly random numbers.
> >
> >"Gott werft nicht!" ("God does not throw dice!") -- Albert Einstein
> >
> >Sorry, I could not resist this urge. (What is it about random numbers that
> >provokes so much discourse?!)
>
> Whoever said they're too important to be left to chance got it right.
> (Which is more than we can say for Albert here...)
>
> David C. Ullrich
> *********************
> "Sometimes you can have access violations all the
> time and the program still works." (Michael Caracena,
> comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc 5/1/01)