* NAME * VERSION * SYNOPSIS * DESCRIPTION * METHODS * DEPENDENCIES * BIBLIOGRAPHY * AUTHOR __________________________________________________________________________ NAME Crypt::Random - Cryptographically Secure, True Random Number Generator. __________________________________________________________________________ VERSION $Revision: 1.1.1.1 $ $Date: 2001/06/21 15:34:49 $ __________________________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS use Crypt::Random qw( makerandom ); my $r = makerandom ( Size => 512, Strength => 1 ); __________________________________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION Crypt::Random is an interface module to the /dev/random device found on most modern Unix systems. The /dev/random driver gathers environmental noise from various non-deterministic sources including inter-keyboard timings and inter-interrupt timings that occur within the operating system environment. The /dev/random driver maintains an estimate of true randomness in the pool and decreases it every time random strings are requested for use. When the estimate goes down to zero, the routine blocks and waits for the occurrence of non-deterministic events to refresh the pool. The /dev/random kernel module also provides another interface, /dev/urandom, that does not wait for the entropy-pool to recharge and returns as many bytes as requested. /dev/urandom is considerably faster at generation compared to /dev/random, which should be used only when very high quality randomness is desired. __________________________________________________________________________ METHODS makerandom() Generates a random number of requested bitsize in base 10. Following arguments can be specified. Size Bitsize of the random number. Strength 0 || 1 Value of 1 implies that /dev/random should be used for requesting random bits while 0 implies /dev/urandom. Device Alternate device to request random bits from. makerandom_itv() Generates a random number in the specified interval. In addition to the arguments to makerandom() following attributes can be specified. Lower Inclusive Lower limit. Upper Exclusive Upper limit. __________________________________________________________________________ DEPENDENCIES Crypt::Random needs Math::Pari 2.001802 or higher. As of this writing, the latest version of Math::Pari isn't available from CPAN. Fetch it from ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/perl/modules/ __________________________________________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. random.c by Theodore Ts'o. Found in drivers/char directory of the Linux kernel sources. 2. Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott Vanstone. __________________________________________________________________________ AUTHOR Vipul Ved Prakash,