Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++

11.1. Determining What Kind of Random Numbers to Use

Problem

Your application has a need for random numbers. You must figure out what you need to do to get adequate randomness as cheaply as possible, yet still meet your security properties. To do that, you need to understand what kinds of options are available to you and what the trade-offs are.

Solution

There are essentially three classes of solutions:

Insecure random number generators

More properly, these are noncryptographic pseudo-random number generators. You should generally assume that an attacker could predict the output of such a generator.

Cryptographic pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs)

These take a single secure seed and produce as many unguessable random numbers from that seed as necessary. Such a solution should be secure for most uses as long as a few reasonable conditions are met (the most important being that they are securely seeded).

Entropy harvesters

These are sometimes “true” random number generators—although they really just try to gather entropy from other sources and present it directly. They are expected to be secure under most circumstances, but are generally incredibly slow to produce data.

For general-purpose use, the second solution is excellent. Typically, you will need entropy (i.e., truly random data) to seed a cryptographic pseudo-random number generator and will not need it otherwise, except in a few specific circumstances, such as when generating long-term keys.

You should generally avoid the ...