Random numbers are important in bitcoin primarily for generating private
keys. It is also important for creating signatures if you are using a random
value of k, but fullnode defaults to using deterministic k. That means
computing a random private key, or a random seed for use in BIP39 or BIP32,
is the primary use of the random number generator. Note that the simplicity
of this class is extremely carefully considered. It is easy to audit that
this code runs node's randomBytes function. It is also easy to audit that
the randomBytes method is correctly interpreted as
window.crypto.getRandomValues when this code is browserified by browserify,
and thus also works correctly in the browser. We deliberately do not do
anything else to this random number in order to minimize possible errors in
this absolutely critical code.
var crypto = require('crypto');
var Random = {};
Random.getRandomBuffer = function(size) {return crypto.randomBytes(size);
}
module.exports = Random;
Random Number Generator
Random numbers are important in bitcoin primarily for generating private keys. It is also important for creating signatures if you are using a random value of k, but fullnode defaults to using deterministic k. That means computing a random private key, or a random seed for use in BIP39 or BIP32, is the primary use of the random number generator. Note that the simplicity of this class is extremely carefully considered. It is easy to audit that this code runs node's randomBytes function. It is also easy to audit that the randomBytes method is correctly interpreted as window.crypto.getRandomValues when this code is browserified by browserify, and thus also works correctly in the browser. We deliberately do not do anything else to this random number in order to minimize possible errors in this absolutely critical code.