Is this secure?

[Michael Rudolf]

Am 24.02.2010 19:35, schrieb mk:
> On 2010-02-24 18:56, Michael Rudolf wrote:
>
>> The reason is 256 % 26 != 0
>> 256 mod 26 equals 22, thus your code is hitting a-v about 10% (256/26 is
>> approx. 10) more often than w-z.
>
> <Barbie voice>writing secure code is hard...

So true. That's why one should stick to standard libs when it comes to 
crypto or security in general. It's just to easy to mess it up. Just ask 
Debian about whether touching OpenSSL was a good idea ;)


>> You might want to skip the values 0-22
>> to achieve a truly uniform distribution.
> Hmm perhaps you meant to skip values over 256 - 22 ?

That's the same thing as x mod y equals x+N*y mod y for every natural N.

> def gen_rand_word(n):
> with open('/dev/urandom') as f:
> return ''.join([chr(ord('a') + ord(x) % 26) for x in f.read(n) if ord(x)
>  > 22])

Off-by-one-error: you're skipping len(range(22))==23 hits.
OK, I just see that I wrote misleading 0-22 while I meant range(22).


> While with this:
> def gen_rand_word(n):
> with open('/dev/urandom') as f:
> return ''.join([chr(ord('a') + ord(x) % 26) for x in f.read(n) if ord(x)
> < 235])

Same off-by-one.

>> FYI: Electronic Cash PINs in europe (dont know about the rest of the
>> world) were computed the same way (random hexdigit and just mod it when
>> it's too large) leading to a high probability that your first digit was
>> a 1 :)
> Schadenfreude is deriving joy from others' misfortunes; what is the
> German word, if any, for deriving solace from others' misfortunes? ;-)

Well - "Schadenfreude" *is* in fact a german word :)
"Schaden" is the event or result of misfortune, "Freude" is joy.


Well, I really think that you should use repeated Random.choice on an 
alphabet.
Or Random.Systemrandom.choice if you don't trust the PRNG.

Regards,
Michael