LWN.net Logo

LCE: Don't play dice with random numbers

LCE: Don't play dice with random numbers

Posted Nov 21, 2012 5:20 UTC (Wed) by hpa (subscriber, #48575)
In reply to: LCE: Don't play dice with random numbers by vomlehn
Parent article: LCE: Don't play dice with random numbers

This is a good example, too, of where a particular *kind* of randomness properties matters for the application - in your case, you genuinely don't care if you get the same MAC on multiple boots (in fact, it probably would be a good thing.) The important thing is to avoid collisions across multiple *systems*.

The timing of network traffic that someone mentioned is not very random, and worse, it is potentially observable, which limits its utility.


(Log in to post comments)

Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds