From: kosaki.motohiro@... Date: 2016-01-02T18:09:53+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:72672] [Ruby trunk - Bug #9569] SecureRandom should try /dev/urandom first Issue #9569 has been updated by Motohiro KOSAKI. First off, thank you for providing number. Then we can discuss scientific way. blog pages are not considered a formal document. However I can't reproduce your conclusion. In my result, securerandom has one weak and /dev/urandom has two weaks. https://gist.github.com/kosaki/3a9a9126cb39e601be2d Of cource, this result doesn't mean urandom is crap. This just mean dieharder's output is unstable, I think. ---------------------------------------- Bug #9569: SecureRandom should try /dev/urandom first https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9569#change-55923 * Author: Corey Csuhta * Status: Rejected * Priority: Normal * Assignee: ruby-core * ruby -v: * Backport: ---------------------------------------- Right now, `SecureRandom.random_bytes` tries to detect an OpenSSL to use before it tries to detect `/dev/urandom`. I think it should be the other way around. In both cases, you just need random bytes to unpack, so SecureRandom could skip the middleman (and [second point of failure](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/02/25/safely-generate-random-numbers/)) and just talk to `/dev/urandom` directly if it's available. Is this a case of just re-ordering the two code chunks so that `/dev/urandom` is tried first? Relevant lines: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/lib/securerandom.rb#L59-L90 -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: