1992-12-14 - ps -laxww for randmoness?

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From: yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 8951156f737c99eb7ed092b6d3e9ac10f128b3294266e84712e1927a41cf279c
Message ID: <9212140100.AA22531@novavax.nova.edu>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1992-12-14 01:04:43 UTC
Raw Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 17:04:43 PST

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From: yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 17:04:43 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: ps -laxww for randmoness?
Message-ID: <9212140100.AA22531@novavax.nova.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


How about using ps -laxww as a source of randomness?  Of course it would be
run throug something like MD5 to get rid of the structure.  This would
not be good on a multi-user system because ps command may have been 
modified to log the person invoking it, time, and output to somewhere.

But on a personal workstation that you trust, it could be a pretty
good source of unpredictable data.

This is not my original idea, I think it was suggested in one of the
multiple precision math packages I looked at recently.

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• 1992-12-14 (Sun, 13 Dec 92 17:04:43 PST) - ps -laxww for randmoness? - yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)
  • 1992-12-14 (Mon, 14 Dec 92 15:43:24 PST) - ps -laxww for randmoness? - pmetzger@shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
    • 1992-12-15 (Tue, 15 Dec 92 07:31:35 PST) - Re: ps -laxww for randmoness? - avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au (Darren Reed)
      • 1992-12-15 (Tue, 15 Dec 92 07:56:18 PST) - Re: ps -laxww for randmoness?timeofday for randmoness - yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)
        • 1992-12-15 (Tue, 15 Dec 92 09:05:15 PST) - Re: timeofday for randomnessness ? - avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au (Darren Reed)
      • 1992-12-16 (Tue, 15 Dec 92 23:15:59 PST) - Re: ps -laxww for randmoness? - tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts’o)
        • 1992-12-16 (Tue, 15 Dec 92 23:46:40 PST) - re: ps -laxww for randmoness? - “Mark W. Eichin” <eichin@cygnus.com>