[Python-Dev] BDFL ruling request: should we block forever waiting for high-quality random bits? (original) (raw)

David Mertz mertz at gnosis.cx
Fri Jun 10 16:01:12 EDT 2016

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:

On 06/10/2016 12:29 PM, David Mertz wrote:

I believe that secrets.tokenbytes() and secrets.SystemRandom() should be changed even for 3.5.1 to use getrandom() on Linux. Surely you meant 3.5.2? 3.5.1 shipped last December.

Yeah, that combines a couple thinkos even. I had intended to write "for 3.5.2" ... but that is also an error, since the secrets module doesn't exist until 3.6. So yes, I think 3.5.2 should restore the 2.6-3.4 behavior of os.urandom(), and the NEW APIs in secrets should use the "best available randomness (even if it blocks)"

Donald is correct that we have the spelling secrets.token_bytes() available in 3.6a1, so the spellings secrets.getrandom() or secrets.randbytes() are not needed. However, Sebastian's (adapted) suggestion to allow secrets.token_bytes(k, *, nonblock=False) as the signature makes sense to me (i.e. it's a choice of "block or raise exception", not an option to get non-crypto bytes).

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