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According to the link, this is being used as a source of entropy to generate random numbers. Fascinating.
by tectonic 15y ago
According to the link, this is being used as a source of entropy to generate random numbers. Fascinating.
- palish 15y agoHah! That's so simple, yet so brilliant.
- obtino 15y agoMouse movements have been long used as a source of entropy in desktop applications.
- shadowfox 15y agoIndeed. Putty's keygen thing has been using it for quite a long time for example
- snippyhollow 15y ago/dev/random too :) http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@c2.net/msg01708.html http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@c2.net/msg01708.htm...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Hawramani 15y agoI read that PGP did that in the 90's.
- willscott 15y agoSeems pretty reasonable to expect it to be this code from the apache shindig library: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/shindig/trunk/features/src/main/javascript/features/shindig.random/random.js http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/shindig/trunk/features/src/m... From the file: This code implements a safer random() method that is seeded from screen width/height and (presumably random/unguessable) mouse movement, in an effort to create a better seed for random(). Its aim is to solve the problem of gadgets that are relying on secret RPC tokens to validate identity.
- sebkomianos 15y agoAren't there a lot of patterns on how we interact with an interface? For example, most people on facebook move their pointers to check their notifications/new messages/friend requests. Wouldn't that produce a lot of "not so random" random numbers? (I am not looking to start a conversation on how random random numbers are, just curious on why they used this specific technique)