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Comment by jwilk | Hacker News Reader

Are there any good random numbers libraries for C?

Providing good random numbers should be done by the OS (kernel and libc). Don't try to fake it in userland.

   Please wiggle your mouse for 1 minute so we can gather entropy for you AES key.

REALLY?

I always though that was supposed to feed /dev/urandom.

/dev/urandom is a perfectly good source for random numbers. Because it's fed from the kernel which is gathering all kinds of entropy, including mouse movement interrupt timings. Bad implementations not considered.

One problem with /dev/urandom is you always have to open it, create a filedescriptor just to get to some random number!?

Fast? Unpredictable based on previous output if the seed is truly random? Here is a read I enjoyed on the subject: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/pinewiki/C(2f)Randomizat...

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