From: jsw@neon.netscape.com (Jeff Weinstein)
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 95 03:38:58 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: My Day
In-Reply-To: <43o44t$hof@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
Message-ID: <43oquc$70f@tera.mcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In article <43o44t$hof@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>, iagoldbe@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Goldberg) writes:
[ summary of Ian's day deleted ]

  Now imagine what my last 48 hours have been like.  :-)

> Holger.Reif@PrakInf.TU-Ilmenau.DE (Holger Reif ) was kind enough to
> verify that the SunOS 4.1.3 version of Netscape generates its keys in
> _exactly_ the same way as Solaris and HP-UX; he says he'll test other
> architectures tomorrow.  I suspect any big-endian machine with the
> lrand48() function (which is used in key generation on Solaris/HP-UX;
> it's disguised in unssl.c as the macro mklcpr()) will be the same.
> Other Unix flavours should require only minor changes.

  Most of the unix machines do the same thing.  On SGI machines
that have the hardware cycle counter, its value is used in place of the
srand48(usec), lrand48() sequence.  BSDI the code used srandom and random.

> I'm still interested in what Windoze clients do (other than lose).

  On windows and mac the first 32bit seed is seconds since 1970, and the
second 32bit seed is the "tick count", which I'm told is the number of
milliseconds since windows started.

	--Jeff

-- 
Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist
Netscape Communication Corporation
jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw
Any opinions expressed above are mine.