Re: Is there something like /dev/random under Windows?

From: Anton Stiglic (stiglic_at_cs.mcgill.ca)
Date: 12/01/03 

Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 13:50:35 -0800

"Henrick Hellström" <henrick.hellstrm@telia.com> wrote in message
news:QtIyb.36207$mU6.124647@newsb.telia.net...
> wrong way philbin wrote:
>
> > CryptGenRandom
> >
> >
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/security/security/cryptgenrandom.asp
>
> I don't know what worries me the most: The fact that they claim to be
> using RC4 as a key stream generator and that the output ought to be
> biased, or the fact that I was unable to detect the characteristic RC4
> bias in the output which means that they must be using at least one
> other algorithm than the one they claim to be using.
>

If you want to use something where you know what is being done, you can
use the "continuously seeded pseudorandom number generator" for windows
which can be found in Cryptlib. This is based on what is described in the
paper "The generation of random numbers for cryptographic purposes" by
Peter Gutmann. It's good stuff. For example GnuPG uses this under
Windows where /dev/random and /dev/urandom are not available.

--Anton

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