Re: [boost] Boost.Uuid and header-only support

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost.Uuid and header-only support
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-11-04 17:46:50

James E. King, III wrote:
> It would be safer to use Wincrypt on windows desktop for these reasons:
>
> 1. RtlGenRandom has no published interface...

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa387694(v=vs.85).aspx

> and may disappear at any time.

If it does, we'll deal with it.

> 2. Consumers who use their own Wincrypt provider for entropy would be 
> broken by such a change.

First, there are no such consumers, and second, get_random_bytes has no way 
to supply a "provider", by design.

> The token allows the POSIX implementation to use a different entropy 
> provider device (other than /dev/urandom)...

I know. This is wrong and should never be used.

>  or even a text file.

random_device is not the correct or portable way to use a text file as a 
source of random numbers.