Re: Generate random passwords with your mouse ... :-)

On 06/03/2025 13:16, Stefan Claas wrote:

You may check out the additional Linux code.

Well, okay, I did.
I asked for 1 character, which took me maybe 2 or 3 seconds (should be command line args, by the way), and then I got a character back pretty much immediately, as one would expect.
Then I ran it again, this time asking for 2 characters. For over 3 minutes I jiggled the mouse like crazy, to no avail. In the end I hit ^C.
Here's my output. Note the position of the interrupt at the end of the "Progress" line.
rjh@hero:~/alldata/dev/crypto/stefanclaas/entropy/mouse$ time ./scmouse
Enter desired number of hex bytes (default is 16, max 256): 2
Generate character-based password instead of hex? (1=yes, 0=no): 1
Using 2 bytes for entropy collection
Please move your mouse to collect entropy...
Take your time, each mouse movement is being recorded.
Progress: 50% [##########----------]^C
Entropy collection completed!
Random Password: Za
SHA256: ccb4d4846d431717f5bad8aabbad7d2b7e07f1611f506964c5c0c1af8f9a07dd
real 3m3.799s
user 0m0.834s
sys 0m2.252s
At 90+ seconds per byte, I can get entropy faster from my 20d16 --- 80 bits per chuck, at as fast a speed as I can type them in.
Why is it so slow?
--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
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