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tl;dr is basically on one side a suggestion to move away from the prng included in openssl because it could have bug, could be used wrong, and doesn't add anyth

by cwmma 9y ago

tl;dr is basically on one side a suggestion to move away from the prng included in openssl because it could have bug, could be used wrong, and doesn't add anything from a cryptographic perspective and instead directly use the OS methods of generating randomness. There is then a lot of resistance to this on the grounds that fixing these theoretical bugs could add real bugs and considering how many OSs need to be supported this would trend towards rolling one's own crypto which the maintainers do NOT want to do. There is openness though towards bundling libsodium and using it to generate randomness.

glandium 9y ago
> move away from the prng included in openssl because it could have bug, could be used wrong, (...) and instead directly use the OS methods of generating randomness. This could phrased as: move away from a prng that could have bugs, could be used wrong and instead use a different prng that could have bugs and could be used wrong. And each platform would use a different prng. Put this way, it's not really enticing.
- deleted 9y ago
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- LgWoodenBadger 9y ago
  It's a move to eliminate a dependency that provides no extra security (and likely weakens security). The dependency they want to eliminate (OpenSSL) ALREADY relies on the "different prng that could have bugs and could be used wrong." The only thing they would gain is not having to handle platform-dependent issues reading from system's prng (which is only really different on Windows?).