Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Please don't use arc4random* for cryptographic purposes. RC4 is broken -- there are practical attacks against it. It's fine for non-secure purposes though (eg. monte carlo simulation).


The 'arc4' no longer refers to RC4 on macOS/iOS and OpenBSD. On those systems 'arc4random' is playfully a bacronym for "A Replacement Call for Random". The new arc4random* implementation will now be replaced as cryptographic techniques advance.

It appears the Apple and OpenBSD implementations use the getentropy syscall and then add additional entropy mixing.


Yup, OpenBSD have even changed calls to other entropy sources to returning strong random by default from arc4random.

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141807513728073&w=2



arc4random uses chacha20 on openBSD now, has for several years, OSX and FreeBSD are yet to update...


The macOS Sierra man page says it uses the NIST-approved AES cipher and will be replaced as the techniques advance.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: