/dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]

[Michael Shields]

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In article <199510301925.VAA27116 at grumble.grondar.za>,
Mark Murray <mark at grondar.za> wrote:
> Something I didn't mention earlier; we felt that letting the unwashed
> masses read /dev/*random was not a good idea, as they could deplete
> the pool of entropy all to easily for attack purposes.

That's really just a DOS attack, isn't it?  An application that needs
true randomness should be using /dev/random, which you can slow but not
disturb, and an application that is using /dev/urandom should be ok with
less than full entropy.

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-- 
Shields.