Hello world!

It only seems fitting to begin anything in IT with the ever familiar "Hello world".   The birth and desire of CryptGenRandom was not to just "borrow" an old crypto API function for its name, but to provide a broad range of IT topics.  That said, most of the topics will focus on security (that is my job).  But I wanted the liberty to discuss other IT topics that can appeal to the readers who don't think xoring ones and zeros is super sexy cool.  Or, readers who want to run in the opposite directions because the content uses words like nonrepudiation or includes a discussion on reliable random sources of entropy.  While security is a serious topic, IT should be fun and entertaining.  So, in true geek fashion, I'll include a myriad of movie quotes, science fiction and movie quotes, and the occasional music lyric. While the primary audience for my random geeky thoughts and esoteric deep dives into security technology is IT Professionals, I'll dabble into some scripting, programming, and various under-the-hood diatribes... and anything else in which you are interested.

Until the next post--- peace!!!

Mike

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2017
  I have a question you may or may not be able to answer. I'm using Win 10 Anniversary Edition(my turn for Creators hasn't come around yet) just so you know where I'm starting from. I recently purchased a hardware random number(bit) generator for use with another machine I have that's Linux. I was wondering if Windows 10 could make use of it to add "real" entropy to it's random numbers. The only information I found that concerned injecting random numbers was pre-fill the buffer used when you call CryptGenRand, but the little documentation seemed to say that would only seed the numbers returned 'in that call'. Is that correct or is there another way to inject the random bits from the generator?
  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2018
    I totally missed this comment. To answer it, to add entropy source to the existing entropy pool in Windows, you need to download the Cryptographic Provider Developer Kit (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30688). There is a section in that help file titled "Implementing an Entropy Source"-- that should get you pointed in the proper direction. ms