On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Frank v Waveren wrote:
>> Frank v Waveren wrote:
>> > Am I missing something here? I thought that you could mix all the non-random
>> > numbers you want into the entropy pool (long live xor), and it will never make
>> > the entropy worse? So I'd say mixing in the RNG won't do any harm, so why not?
>>
>> Read the intro text in drivers/char/random.c...
>>
>> If the RNG provides a lot more data than other entropy sources, it can
>> throw things out of whack.
>
>Hmm, interesting. I quote (in case someone else is interested)
>
> * outside observer to measure. Randomness from these sources are
> * added to an "entropy pool", which is mixed using a CRC-like function.
> * This is not cryptographically strong, but it is adequate assuming
> * the randomness is not chosen maliciously, and it is fast enough that
> * the overhead of doing it on every interrupt is very reasonable.
>
>Why not use XOR, which is 'pretty quick' too, and *really* doesn't care if
>your mixing in your bookmarks file or radioactive decay data?
Muaahhahahahahah! Made my day! ;o)
-- Mike A. Harris Linux advocate Computer Consultant GNU advocate Capslock Consulting Open Source advocateJoin the FreeMWare project - the goal to produce a FREE program in which you can run Windows 95/98/NT, and other operating systems.
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