Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 31 Oct 2001 08:42:50 -0600 (CST) | From | Oliver Xymoron <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] random.c bugfix |
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On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Oct 30, 2001 11:07 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote: > > Zero-padding isn't a problem, since it's perfectly safe to mix in zero > > bytes into the pool. > > Well, Oliver tends to disagree. I don't know enough either way. It _does_ > seem bad that if you wrote continually wrote 1-byte values into /dev/random > and padded out the end of the word that it would be bad. However, in the > end this is no worse than cat /dev/zero > /dev/random, which is also allowed.
That was just conservatism on my part. There are a large number of hashes and ciphers for which zero inputs are suboptimal so my gut feel was that it was a bad idea. That was silly of me, given the way the mixing works.
-- "Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."
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