[Cryptography] randomness +- entropy

James A. Donald jamesd at echeque.com
Tue Nov 12 03:23:51 EST 2013


On 2013-11-12 16:44, John Denker wrote:
> The fact is, there are some applications that cannot make do with
> low-quality randomness *and* cannot afford to wait.

I don't think so.

I think this is a configuration bug.  By the time you have completed the 
boot process, you have accumulated lots of entropy, and there is no 
cryptographic application so urgent it cannot wait for the boot process 
to complete.

However, some idiot puts a process needing true randomness early in the 
boot process for no good reason.

A process needing true randomness should fail by design in such case.




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