Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:32:30 -0500 (EST) | From | Dave Wreski <> | Subject | Re: kernel security questions |
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>> - 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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