frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Randomness Requirements for Security (2005)

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4086
27•mooreds•3d ago

Comments

coderatlarge•1d ago
from the intro:

“This Best Current Practice document describes techniques for producing random quantities that will be resistant to attack. It recommends that future systems include hardware random number generation or provide access to existing hardware that can be used for this purpose. It suggests methods for use if such hardware is not available, and it gives some estimates of the number of random bits required for sample applications.”

magicalhippo•1d ago
This is RFC 4086, which was published in 2005. It's still listed as the current best practice, however much has happened since 2005, especially in the field of security.

So I wonder if there are some areas in which this document is lacking or which aren't holding up as well?

One thing I have picked up is randomness inside virtual machines, and issues surrounding that. Sure if you got hypervisor support you're golden, but what if you don't?

maqp•1d ago
>So I wonder if there are some areas in which this document is lacking or which aren't holding up as well?

Ring oscillators have been embedded into Intel/AMD CPUs, and they're accessible via RDRAND/RDSEED. Blum-Blum-Shub has been phased out, these days you see AES-based CSRPNGs and Linux uses ChaCha20. The RNG in Linux has been overhauled at least once and so the /dev/random section is outdated.

Interestingly the key size recommendations were at around 90 bit range already 20 years ago, and they haven't changed that much. That's still quite close to the password minimum recommendation. Makes you wonder whether it should be closer to the 103 bits now.

Triple DES has been deprecated.

All in all, the guidance has changed. These days you should not be concerning yourself with any userland CSPRNG, just use the OS syscalls like GETRANDOM. Nothing you do above a kernel module RNG will make it more secure.

How I got a Root Shell on a Credit Card Terminal

https://stefan-gloor.ch/yomani-hack
323•stgl•6h ago•79 comments

Estimating Logarithms

https://obrhubr.org/logarithm-estimation
27•surprisetalk•1d ago•9 comments

Cinematography of "Andor"

https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/05/20/cinematography-of-andor-interview-with-christophe-nuyens.html
230•rcarmo•10h ago•248 comments

M8.2 solar flare, Strong G4 geomagnetic storm watch

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/view/581/20250531-m8-2-solar-flare-strong-g4-geomagnetic-storm-watch.html
113•sva_•3h ago•30 comments

Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/chemistry/NI3/
15•keepamovin•3d ago•4 comments

Why DeepSeek is cheap at scale but expensive to run locally

https://www.seangoedecke.com/inference-batching-and-deepseek/
220•ingve•12h ago•112 comments

A new generation of Tailscale access controls

https://tailscale.com/blog/grants-ga
103•ingve•3d ago•25 comments

Atari Means Business with the Mega ST

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/atari-means-business-with-the-mega
120•rbanffy•9h ago•74 comments

Learning from the Amiga API/ABI

https://asm-basic-coder.neocities.org/rants/amigaapilearn
33•danny00•5h ago•16 comments

When Fine-Tuning Makes Sense: A Developer's Guide

https://getkiln.ai/blog/why_fine_tune_LLM_models_and_how_to_get_started
72•scosman•3d ago•31 comments

AI Malware Is Here: New Report Shows How Fake AI Tools Are Spreading Ransomware

https://blog.talosintelligence.com/fake-ai-tool-installers/
32•karlperera•3h ago•16 comments

Progressive JSON

https://overreacted.io/progressive-json/
418•kacesensitive•19h ago•189 comments

RenderFormer: Neural rendering of triangle meshes with global illumination

https://microsoft.github.io/renderformer/
231•klavinski•16h ago•47 comments

Figma Slides Is a Beautiful Disaster

https://allenpike.com/2025/figma-slides-beautiful-disaster
320•tobr•14h ago•185 comments

Google AI Edge – on-device cross-platform AI deployment

https://ai.google.dev/edge
133•nreece•13h ago•25 comments

How I like to install NixOS (declaratively)

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2025-06-01-nixos-installation-declarative/
76•secure•13h ago•83 comments

Show HN: I compressed 10k PDFs into a 1.4GB video for LLM memory

https://github.com/Olow304/memvid
12•saleban1031•3d ago•0 comments

Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser

https://stephencoyle.net/kilnettle
180•indiantinker•14h ago•45 comments

Structured Errors in Go (2022)

https://southcla.ws/structured-errors-in-go
104•todsacerdoti•15h ago•36 comments

Browser extension (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge) to redirect URLs based on regex

https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector
67•Bluestein•13h ago•30 comments

Elevenlabs Conversational AI 2.0

https://elevenlabs.io/blog/conversational-ai-2-0
14•killion•1h ago•4 comments

New adaptive optics shows details of our star's atmosphere

https://nso.edu/press-release/new-adaptive-optics-shows-stunning-details-of-our-stars-atmosphere/
144•sohkamyung•21h ago•22 comments

Show HN: Patio – Rent tools, learn DIY, reduce waste

https://patio.so
183•GouacheApp•19h ago•119 comments

A Pokémon battle simulation engine

https://github.com/pkmn/engine
69•rickcarlino•3d ago•31 comments

Stepping Back

https://rjp.io/blog/2025-05-31-stepping-back
131•rjpower9000•19h ago•55 comments

A Beautiful Technique for Some XOR Related Problems

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/68953
43•blobcode•13h ago•4 comments

Show HN: A Implementation of Alpha Zero for Chess in MLX

https://github.com/koogle/mlx-playground/tree/main/chesszero
57•jakobfrick•3d ago•9 comments

Ovld – Efficient and featureful multiple dispatch for Python

https://github.com/breuleux/ovld
92•breuleux•3d ago•40 comments

A Lean companion to Analysis I

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/a-lean-companion-to-analysis-i/
259•jeremyscanvic•1d ago•32 comments

CCD co-inventor George E. Smith dies at 95

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/science/george-e-smith-dead.html
140•NaOH•1d ago•16 comments