Re: Entropy sources under WinXP

On 5/18/2007 2:51 AM, keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
If one has a non-interactive application[1] running under WinXP with
no hardware TRNG attached, what are reasonable sources of entropy for,
say, seeding PRNGs? I know some use the Pentium Time-Stamp Counter,
but that's going to be a lot less than 64 bits. Where else can I find
a decent source?

1. So mouse movements, keyboard timings, etc are out.

You can use CryptGenRandom to generate random numbers, or directly read
the registry value HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Cryptography\RNG\Seed.

--Mark

.

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