Random number generation
When generating random data for use in cryptographic operations, such as an
initialization vector for encryption in
CBC
mode, you do not
want to use the standard
random
module APIs. This is because they do not
provide a cryptographically secure random number generator, which can result in
major security issues depending on the algorithms in use.
Therefore, it is our recommendation to
always use your operating system’s
provided random number generator
, which is available as
os.urandom()
.
For example, if you need 16 bytes of random data for an initialization vector,
you can obtain them with:
>>> import os
>>> iv = os.urandom(16)
If you need your random number as an big integer, you can use
int.from_bytes
to convert the result of
os.urandom
:
>>> serial = int.from_bytes(os.urandom(16), byteorder="big")
In addition, the
Python standard library
includes the
secrets
module,
which can be used for generating cryptographically secure random numbers, with
specific helpers for text-based formats.