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by vtsrh 3994 days ago
Speaker mentions[0] that it is possible to get a different statistically random value every time you run the program, without any input to the program, apparently by using some tricks, but she refuses to elaborate for the camera. Can anyone explain how that works?

Has this something to do with address space randomization?

[0]:https://youtu.be/45Oet5qjlms?t=1h3m3s

2 comments

> (This last one relies on the operating system placing myRNG at a different address every time the program is run. It's not as strong as the other techniques.)

from: http://www.pcg-random.org/useful-features.html#id2

Linux gives each process a 32 bit random seed, which is probably more useful (as is making a syscall). On an embedded system the address seed may well be useless anyway.
Probably not what she meant, but Linux has a RNG that extracts randomness from CPU execution time jitter: https://lwn.net/Articles/642166/