On 6/7/2011 7:35 AM, Robin Becker wrote: > I guess what I'm asking is whether any sequence that's using random to > generate random numbers is predictable if enough samples are drawn. Apparently so. random.random is *not* 'cryptographically secure'. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseudorandom_number_generator One of Python's crypto wrapper modules (sorry, forget which one) was recently modified to expose the crypto rng functions in the wrapped C library. It should be mentioned in What New for 3.3. You might be able to get at the same functions with ctypes. -- Terry Jan Reedy