/ dev / random permission denied

Question

I read about random numbers and their generation. I was interested in randomness since I started programming. I read that Linux kernels also use arbitrary number architectures.

The structure consists of a two-level cascaded sequence of pools coupled with CSPRNGs. Each pool is a large group of bits which represents the current state of the random number generator. The CSPRNGs are currently based on SHA-1, but the kernel developers are considering a switch to SHA-3. The kernel RNG produces two user-space output streams. One of these goes to /dev/urandom and also to the kernel itself; the latter is useful because there are uses for random numbers within the kernel. The other output stream goes to /dev/random. The difference between the two is that /dev/random tries to estimate how much entropy is coming into the system, and will throttle its output if there is insufficient entropy. By contrast, the /dev/urandom stream does not throttle output, and if users consume all of the available entropy, the interface degrades to a pure CSPRNG. 

So, full of excitement, I tried to go in and check what's in / dev / random and / dev / urandom. But he said:

 root@ubuntu :/home/sunny# /dev/random bash: /dev/random: Permission denied root@ubuntu :/home/sunny# /dev/urandom bash: /dev/urandom: Permission denied 

However, when I check the "ls" command, I see "random" there in / dev. I would like to know this in detail.

Answer 1

/dev/random not executable. Try cat /dev/random . Or, if you don't like to test your reflexes, dd if=/dev/random bs=128 count=1 display a limited number of random spam messages.