4 ms·
Random ascii letters and numbers are just as good as random bytes.
by startling 11y ago
Random ascii letters and numbers are just as good as random bytes.
- sarciszewski 11y agoSort of. There's less entropy per character if you know it will always be alphanumeric versus a string that of random bytes. If you take 32 bytes from /dev/urandom and base64 encode it, it has the same entropy as the original binary string (unless you use it in a way that will result in it being truncated). But the total entropy of the two strings is unchanged. One is just longer. In short: You're correct, but with nuance that bears stating explicitly.
- tedunangst 11y agoRandom ASCII letters decoded as base64 are unlikely to result in only ASCII letters. And if you generated random letters to start, there's no reason to base64 encode it.