Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?

[Marc Haber]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 10:42:49AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> The original point was that urandom draws entropy from random, and that 
> it is an an inobvious and unintentional drain on the entropy pool. At 
> least that's how I read it.

And you are reading it correct. At least one of the major TLS
libraries does it this way, putting unnecessary stress on the kernel
entropy pool. While I now consider this a bug in the library, there
surely are gazillions of similiarily flawed applications out there in
the wild.

Greetings
Marc

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