Re: Seeding random() randomly
Re: Seeding random() randomly
- Subject: Re: Seeding random() randomly
- From: Jens Alfke <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 08:50:42 -0700
On May 26, 2011, at 9:04 PM, Scott Ribe wrote:
>> It’s never a good idea to seed a RNG with something guessable like this.
>
> Not all applications of random() have anything to do with security…
Agreed. But I didn’t say it was always a bad idea, just never a good one. :) Seeding with something like a timestamp gives you results that are neither repeatable nor truly unguessable, and I can’t think of any situation where that would be a benefit. Especially when it’s more work than just calling srandomdev().
Besides, people tend to search for snippets of existing code and paste them into new code, and it would be sad if code like the above got moved from, say, a game to, say, a password generator.
—Jens
Attachment:
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
_______________________________________________
Cocoa-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list.
Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden