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Userland PRNGs are one of the easiest ways to introduce security vulnerabilities into your programs. I would recommend being very, VERY careful before trying t

Userland PRNGs are one of the easiest ways to introduce security vulnerabilities into your programs. I would recommend being very, VERY careful before trying to do this, like the traditional "Don't roll your own crypto" advice.

raverbashing 13y ago
Of course. But there are a lot of needs for random numbers that don't need the random numbers to be secure.
- azinman2 13y ago
  In which case rand and the like really should be renamed unsecure_random to prevent confusion.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    Fine by me
- dlitz 13y ago
  Most developers don't know how to make that distinction, and even savvy ones know better than to take the risk of being wrong. It's 2014. There are well-funded governments and organized crime attacking our systems. If downstream developers still have to ask the question, "what kind of random numbers does this API provide?", then it's a bug in the platform.
ekimekim 13y ago
Only in this case you aren't rolling your own crypto, but (hopefully) using a popular, field-tested CSPRNG available as a library for your language of choice. Unless you mistakenly pick a non-cryptographic PRNG, and assuming the implementation is correct (which is just as true of kernel code as it is of user code), I fail to see how you would introduce a vulnerability.