Hacker News Reader

Australian National University hosts a random number generator based on quantum fluctuations in the vacuum : https://qrng.anu.edu.au/

Question : With respect to breaking cryptography, today's cryptographically secure pseudo random number generators (CSPRNGs) seem capable. What threat scenarios would require true (or near-true) random generators?

View on HN

CSPRNGs still need to be seeded with random numbers.

And very importantly, a TRNG is often not cryptographically safe and should never be directly used for security related use cases. Basically only be used to (re)seed a good CSPRNG (DRBG in NIST parlance).

Another benefit of a CSPRNG is vastly higher performance than most TRNGs can achieve. A TRNG often provide kbps birate. A CSPRNG can easily deliver Many MBps, even GBps.

thank you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com