Hi Sebastian, If you are looking at cryptographically secure pseudo random generator, you will need more than secure seeding. A secure random generator must be a - Random (!) b - Uniformly distributed c - Unpredictable To my knowledge there is no PRNG in boost that satisfy these three. Even the mersenne twister, present in boost, is insufficient for secure uses since its output can be predicted (success in a & b, failure in c). When a crypto lib will land in boost, one can expect a secure PRNG to appear. Which is why, in my opinion, there is no need for a safe seeder at the moment. The generators are not safe themselves. -Edouard -----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Sebastian Nowozin Sent: jeudi 14 mai 2009 15:56 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: [boost] [random] cross-platform secure seeding methods planned? Hello everybody, I like the flexibility boost::random offers. However, a severe drawback of the current library is that it does not offer a safe way of generating seeds. Of course the methods for providing this feature would vary quite a lot across platforms (e.g. on some systems its safe to use /dev/random, on some it is not). However, as the library is currently, many users will resort to ad-hoc or unsafe seeding methods instead of implementing a safe solution themselves. Hence, is a cross-platform secure seeding feature planned for boost::random in the future? Thanks, Sebastian _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4075 (20090514) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4075 (20090514) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com