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prng quality



Do any of my users have an idea how to gauge the quality of random numbers generated by the prng? There's an article addressing sppofing attacks based on guessing TCP sequence numbers that suggests that after MacOS X gained a /dev/random the sequence numbers became effectively random, but indicates the randomness involves 31 bits of randomness to the other BSD operating systems' 32 bits. See <http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/newtcp/>. While the 32nd bit may not make a big difference here, I was curious about its impact on generating crytpographic-quality random data and the potential limits of the randomness in Darwin's /dev/random.

Any thoughts on how to measure the randomness, and the tests one might use to gauge the impact on applications where the quality of the randomness is of critical importance?

Best regards,
	Chris

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