Re: Noob dumb question (extending emacs)

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> How I see it, it is very easy to set random seed by providing some
> automatically generated, random string to `random', such as those from
> the system's /proc directory.

Then you just consult a second source of entropy.  Which is more or less
the conclusion: don't rely on the entropy of Emacs' `random' function.

If that other source is a reliable source of more entropy, you don't
need Emacs' `random' at all.  If it is not, you have gained nothing.

And there is another problem which would make things much worse: when
Emacs `random' number generator operates with 48 bit numbers (which
seems to be the case, but I didn't check the sources), each algorithm
calling `random' can only generate passwords with an entropy of
maximally 48 bit, no matter what the entropy of the seed is.

Michael.