Re: [bug-bash] $RANDOM not Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/19/19 2:45 PM, Martijn Dekker wrote:
> Op 16-01-19 om 02:21 schreef Quentin:
>> If you really need some quality CSPRNG values, I'd suggest adding a
>> $SECURE_RANDOM variable that just reads from /dev/urandom.
> 
> IMHO, this would clearly be the correct approach. I don't know of any
> 21st century Unix or Unix-like system that doesn't have /dev/urandom. I
> would really like to see shells adopt this idea -- hopefully all with
> the same variable name.

OK, this is a reasonable approach. Since /dev/urandom just generates
random bytes, there's a lot of flexibility and we're not subject to
any kind of backwards compatibility constraints, especially not the
16-bit limit. What do you think would be the best way to present that
to a user? As a 32-bit random number? A character string you can use to
create filenames? Some other form?

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/