Re: kernel security questions

Dave Wreski (dave@nic.com)
Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:32:30 -0500 (EST)

>> - Can I use /dev/random to generate characters for passwords, or only to
>> seed
>> a password generator?
>
> Do this "dd if=/dev/random of=rands.txt bs=512 count=1". Have a look at
> rands.txt. It'll likely be full of non-printable characters. I just did
> it, and it was almost entirely non-printable characters. It might make
> for really secure passwords, but not very nice ones.

I should have mentioned that -- I realize its mostly garbage. I wrote a C
program that use isalpha() to determine its validity. So it reads three or
four chars, and picks a punctuation mark to prevent alphabetic passwords only.

I just didn't realize how random it actually is, and if its really meant for
this purpose... And how about /dev/urandom?

Dave

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