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From: Alex Alten (Altenhome.com)
Date: Thu Feb 08 2001 - 08:47:18 CST

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    At 04:08 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Wei Dai wrote:
    >On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 07:15:02AM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
    >> >I would say that the easiest thing would be to produce a 160-bit random
    number
    >> >and if it is greater then q, try again - on average you try less then
    twice.
    >>
    >> This has the downside that it burns up more strong RNG output than
    necessary,
    >> if your implementation carefully meters its RNG usage (for example
    /dev/random,
    >> which blocks if you suck out all its entropy) you could run into problems.
    >
    >Instead of using /dev/random directly, grab 160 bits from it as a seed for
    >your own PRNG, and then generate q using that.
    >

    I feel uncomfortable with this suggestion. I doubt you can eliminate the
    problem by transforming the bits via another PRNG.

    - Alex 

    --

    Alex Alten

    AltenHome.Com