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The dangers of weak random numbersThe dangers of weak random numbersPosted Feb 21, 2008 21:12 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458)In reply to: The dangers of weak random numbers by bronson Parent article: The dangers of weak random numbers
It's true that the libc developers can't know why you want a random number, it's definitely also true that one size does not fit all. But the libc implementation is the worst kind of compromise as it is neither fast nor secure. If you want lots of numbers, you will get a lot better performance out of e.g. Mersenne twister, and if you want something even remotely secure, you need to use a special purpose cryptographic algorithm. As near as I can tell, the only situation you would ever want to use the libc random number generator is when you really don't care about either performace or security. Couldn't they at least have done one of the two?
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The dangers of weak random numbers Posted Feb 21, 2008 23:06 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] That's a good point. I can't think of a single thing the libc implementation excels at. I understand why they punted on security, but that's no reason to punt on everything!
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