[6863] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Entropy-gathering gizmos for NT?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wei Dai)
Wed Mar 29 16:50:58 2000
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:13:21 -0800
From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
To: Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
Message-ID: <20000329131320.K29936@eskimo.com>
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In-Reply-To: <200003291554.HAA10132@breakaway.Stanford.EDU>; from Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu on Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 07:54:03AM -0800
On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 07:54:03AM -0800, Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu wrote:
> I'm curious about what all entropy-gathering gizmos, a la "Entropy Gathering
> Deamon" (EGD) <url:http://www.lothar.com/tech/crypto/>, might be available
> for/on NT -- anyone know?
>
> My understanding is that such stuff is effectively built-into Win2K -- anyone
> have comments/observations on that?
It's built into Microsoft's base CryptoAPI service provider, which is
available on Win2K and any Windows OS after Windows 95 I think. You can
do something like this:
// untested
HCRYPTPROV hProvider = 0;
BYTE randomBytes[128];
CryptAcquireContext(&hProvider, 0, 0, PROV_RSA_FULL, CRYPT_VERIFYCONTEXT);
CryptGenRandom(hProvider, sizeof(randomBytes), randomBytes);
