Re: $RANDOM not Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator

[Chet Ramey]

On 12/2/18 6:13 PM, Ole Tange wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 11:45 PM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:
>> On 11/21/18 3:07 PM, Ole Tange wrote:
>>> 'brand' in variables.c is comparable in size to ChaCha20 and ChaCha20
>>> is not completely broken:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa20
>>>
>>> Could we please replace 'brand' with ChaCha20?
>>
>> What is your application that you need something more complicated than
>> the existing PRNG?
> 
> I do not have that currently, but it seems like a fairly small change
> and it seems odd to have modern software not use modern algorithms.

There has to be a compelling reason to change this, especially at a point
so close to a major release.

You might be expecting too much from bash's random number generator. Is
the problem that its period is at most 2**16? For its intended uses, the
cycle length is acceptable. Do you disagree?

-- 
``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/