A platform independent entropy source.

A mostly platform independent method to obtain cryptographically strong entropy (RDRAND, urandom, CryptAPI, and patches welcome) Users looking for cryptographically strong (number-theoretically sound) PRNGs should see the DRBG package too.

Introduction

This package allows Haskell users to easily acquire entropy for use in critical security applications by calling out to either windows crypto api, unix/linux's getrandom and /dev/urandom. Hardware RNGs (currently RDRAND, patches welcome) are supported via the hardwareRNG function.

Quick Start

To simply get random bytes use getEntropy:

#!/usr/bin/env cabal
{- cabal:
    build-depends: base, entropy, bytestring
-}
import qualified Data.ByteString as BS
import           System.Entropy

main :: IO ()
main = print . BS.unpack =<< getEntropy 16
-- Example output: [241,191,215,193,225,27,121,244,16,155,252,41,131,38,6,100]

Faster Randoms from Hardware

Most x86 systems include a hardware random number generator. These can be faster but require more trust in the platform:

import qualified Data.ByteString as B
import           System.Entropy

eitherRNG :: Int -> IO B.ByteString
eitherRNG sz = maybe (getEntropy sz) pure =<< getHardwareEntropy sz

main :: IO ()
main = print . B.unpack =<< eitherRNG 32

This package supports Windows, {li,u}nix, QNX, and has preliminary support for HaLVM.

Typically tested on Linux and OSX - testers are as welcome as patches.