January 22, 2002
Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography
46
So how do we get random numbers on a computer?
nIt sounds so easy: “Just pick some random bytes”
nNo good standard source of computer randomness
nOS state (time-of-day, PID) is very low entropy
nUser keyboard input is very unreliable
nBest practical options aren’t very good
nInter-event timing (keyboard, network), timing loops, fast clocks and interval timers
nBetter would be /dev/random, or hardware generator
nIntel 850 chipset (for Pentium motherboards) has on-board hardware RNG