Re: [PHP6] Merging rand and mt_rand()

Hi, On 26 February 2014 08:13, Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Rowen, > > > On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Rouven Weßling <me@rouvenwessling.de> wrote: >> Hello internals, >> >> there has already been a lot of talk about improving secure random number generation for >> PHP6. One thing I'd like to improve as well, would be non-secure random number generation. Here >> is not so much security at stake but ease of use. >> >> The obvious solution, would be to rename mt_rand to rand and make rand an alias. (The same >> for the supporting functions mt_srand and mt_getrandmax).. >> >> What I'm missing is the history. What was the reason to keep the separate? Am I >> missing something? Well, they do two different things so keeping them separate seems like a good idea ;). > I totally agree with your goals. There are too many ways to do the > same operations, in many areas. However I am not a fan of breaking BC > (even in small ways) without an actual big benefit. It is always easy > to remove, kill, change functions to make them "better". Adding each > single change together will make a migration to a given version almost > impossible or very painful. I would go with a soft way. > > In the case of the random functions, as I said in previous > discussions, I tend to go with a new APIs, clean, with a couple more > algorithms as well as easy to use functions for the common usages > (crypto safe or not). Anthony implemented something in userland, there > are a couple of libraries available too (in C, used by python f.e.) > providing very handy APIs. That's the way I would choose. New APIs would be preferable. Technically, there's nothing wrong with mt_rand() since it does what it says on the box. A mt_rand() function that isn't predictable using a known seed is actually broken ;). Leaking its values may have implications since the seed is vulnerable to recovery, but it already has a bad rep for use anywhere in security. Anthony's library is quite good for cases where getting a decent crypto safe random value isn't possible, but it's really something of a last resort and the thing that makes it decent is the algorithm for mixing entropy sources. Paddy -- Pádraic Brady http://blog.astrumfutura.com http://www.survivethedeepend.com Zend Framework Community Review Team Zend Framework PHP-FIG Representative