In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/random and /dev/urandom are special files that serve as cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators. They allow access to environmental noise collected from device drivers and other sources.[1]/dev/random typically blocks if there was less entropy available than requested; more recently (see below for the differences between operating systems) it usually blocks at startup until sufficient entropy has been gathered, then unblocks permanently. The /dev/urandom device typically was never a blocking device, even if the pseudorandom number generator seed was not fully initialized with entropy since boot. Not all operating systems implement the same methods for /dev/random and /dev/urandom.
Random number generation in kernel space was implemented for the first time for Linux[2] in 1994 by Theodore Ts'o.[3]The implementation used secure hashes rather than ciphers,[clarification needed] to avoid cryptography export restrictions that were in place when the generator was originally designed. The implementation was also designed with the assumption that any given hash or cipher might eventually be found to be weak, and so the design is durable in the face of any such weaknesses. Fast recovery from pool compromise is not considered a requirement, because the requirements for pool compromise are sufficient for much easier and more direct attacks on unrelated parts of the operating system.
In Ts'o's implementation, the generator keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise in the entropy pool. From this entropy pool random numbers are created. When read, the /dev/random device will only return random bytes within the estimated number of bits of noise in the entropy pool. When the entropy pool is empty, reads from /dev/random will block until additional environmental noise is gathered.[4] The intent is to serve as a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator, delivering output with entropy as large as possible. This is suggested by the authors for use in generating cryptographic keys for high-value or long-term protection.[4]
A counterpart to /dev/random is /dev/urandom ("unlimited"[5]/non-blocking random source[4]) which reuses the internal pool to produce more pseudo-random bits. This means that the call will not block, but the output may contain less entropy than the corresponding read from /dev/random. While /dev/urandom is still intended as a pseudorandom number generator suitable for most cryptographic purposes, the authors of the corresponding man page note that, theoretically, there may exist an as-yet-unpublished attack on the algorithm used by /dev/urandom, and that users concerned about such an attack should use /dev/random instead.[4] However such an attack is unlikely to come into existence, because once the entropy pool is unpredictable it doesn't leak security by a reduced number of bits.[6]
It is also possible to write to /dev/random. This allows any user to mix random data into the pool. Non-random data is harmless, because only a privileged user can issue the ioctl needed to increase the entropy estimate.[dubious] The current amount of entropy and the size of the Linux kernel entropy pool, both measured in bits, are available in /proc/sys/kernel/random/ and can be displayed by the command and respectively. cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_availcat /proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize