Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 5 Dec 2007 13:29:12 +0100 | From | Marc Haber <> | Subject | Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much? |
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On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 05:18:11PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 12:41:25PM +0100, Marc Haber wrote: > > 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. > > man 4 random
Thanks for this pointer, I was not aware of the documentation. After reading this thread and the docs, I am now convinced that GnuTLS should seed a PRNG from /dev/(u)random instead of using the entropy directly. I will go filing a bug against GnuTLS.
Greetings Marc
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