HP-UX 11i December 2004 Release Notes

Security
HP-UX Strong Random Number Generator Available on Software Pack
Chapter 13
279
HP-UX Strong Random Number Generator Available on
Software Pack
new for December
2004
Now available on the December 2004 Software Pack (SPK) media is the HP-UX Strong
Random Number Generator, which was released earlier on the Web via the SPK Web
program.
The HP-UX Strong Random Number Generator provides a secure, non-reproducible
source of true random numbers for applications with strong security requirements, such
as for generating encryption keys. Generating encryption keys from a non-random
source constitutes a security risk that can be removed with this product. The
/dev/random and /dev/urandom special files are created during product installation.
When configured to use these special files, applications such as SSH will have a more
secure environment for performing cryptographic computations.
The /dev/random and /dev/urandom files created by this product allow the read (2)
system call to retrieve strong random binary sequences of up to 256 bytes. This interface
is compatible with that provided by the Linux /dev/random and /dev/urandom special
files.
Documentation
For more information, refer to the random (7) manpage, as well as the product-specific
documentation available in the DOCS directory on the Software Pack media.
For more information about Software Pack and how you can obtain the HP-UX Strong
Random Number Generator, see “Software Pack (Optional HP-UX 11i v1 Core
Enhancements)” on page 62.