[ruby-core:75303] [Ruby trunk Bug#9569] SecureRandom should try /dev/urandom first

Issue #9569 has been updated by Shyouhei Urabe.


Note that, while I read through this thread again, no one is arguing /dev/urandom being insecure.  No one states linux kernel source is unreadable.  No one is skeptical about its current implementation.  Just to be clear.  The problem is whether it is designed to be eligible for a possibly high-frequency user-land access; which is not officially stated elsewhere, and the manpage VERY strongly denies.

It's just "everybody else's jumping off a bridge" is not enough for us to commit a wireless bungee jump.

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Bug #9569: SecureRandom should try /dev/urandom first
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9569#change-58431

* Author: Corey Csuhta
* Status: Rejected
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: ruby-core
* ruby -v: 
* Backport: 
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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



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