My general concern with this type of service is that the strings could wind up directly in a rainbow table and that might defeat one of the reasons for using it.
Not an accusation, just an observation about the limits of the service.
but is it really random or pseudorandom?
i feel that services like these can be useful to introduce a higher level of entropy to your own local random number library
> i feel that services like these can be useful to introduce a higher level of entropy to your own local random number library
They just use /dev/urandom + sha512, and them capitalise some characters. You can pipe /dev/urandom input into any number of tools locally to get random strings - base64 is nice as it gives you a wider range of characters.
guys, I think you over-estimate what this tool does. It's not a saas or something to be integrated with projects.
The only reason I've made it is to avoid creating random strings every time I need them. In the past few months I've done the following at least 5 times:
1) run ipython 2) run the following code:
import os
import hashlib
print(hashlib.sha512(os.urandom(128)).hexdigest())
The problem that it takes unnecessary time to do it. `curl -L r.ger.lv` is way simpler and faster for the same result. In fact, it's exactly the same code that's running on this site :) It's a small tool so you have fewer excuses to leave `SECURE_STRING = "TODO_CHANGEME"` in settings files.
I did this tool mainly for myself, thought I'd share it, maybe someone finds it useful.
> guys, I think you over-estimate what this tool does
I don't at all. That's my whole point. You've taken yet another pretty simple command line utility, and made a "web service" for it.
> In the past few months I've done the following at least 5 times
I've probably generated 2x that many random strings just to generate test examples for how else this could be done, compare times, etc. I didn't suddenly think that I should put that on a http server somewhere.
> maybe someone finds it useful
or maybe someone uses it as a source of random data for their production application because they don't know any better.
You can get random strings in a shell by running `base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 30`. If you wanted to make it (or your own solution) easier, why not just create a shell script (or a python script with a shebang line).
Even easier execution (i.e., tab-completion to the path), no reliance on network or a server, no security issues by loading data over a remote connection.
7 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] thread- r.ger.lv - default is 20 characters [a-zA-Z0-9]
- r.ger.lv/<len> <len> of [a-zA-Z0-9]
- r.ger.lv/s-<len> <len> of [a-zA-Z0-9_+-.,!@#$%^&*();\/|"']
`curl -L r.ger.lv/25` - if you want to run from the terminal.
More info: https://www.ger.lv/simple-random-string-generation/
Not an accusation, just an observation about the limits of the service.
Good luck.
What language doesn't have random string generation available either as a standard part of the runtime, or as a reliable library?
They just use /dev/urandom + sha512, and them capitalise some characters. You can pipe /dev/urandom input into any number of tools locally to get random strings - base64 is nice as it gives you a wider range of characters.
The only reason I've made it is to avoid creating random strings every time I need them. In the past few months I've done the following at least 5 times:
1) run ipython 2) run the following code:
The problem that it takes unnecessary time to do it. `curl -L r.ger.lv` is way simpler and faster for the same result. In fact, it's exactly the same code that's running on this site :) It's a small tool so you have fewer excuses to leave `SECURE_STRING = "TODO_CHANGEME"` in settings files.I did this tool mainly for myself, thought I'd share it, maybe someone finds it useful.
I don't at all. That's my whole point. You've taken yet another pretty simple command line utility, and made a "web service" for it.
> In the past few months I've done the following at least 5 times
I've probably generated 2x that many random strings just to generate test examples for how else this could be done, compare times, etc. I didn't suddenly think that I should put that on a http server somewhere.
> maybe someone finds it useful
or maybe someone uses it as a source of random data for their production application because they don't know any better.
You can get random strings in a shell by running `base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 30`. If you wanted to make it (or your own solution) easier, why not just create a shell script (or a python script with a shebang line).
Even easier execution (i.e., tab-completion to the path), no reliance on network or a server, no security issues by loading data over a remote connection.