MCOOKIE
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (1)
Updated: 25 September 1995
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NAME
mcookie - generate magic cookies for xauth
SYNOPSIS
mcookie
[-v]
[-f
filename]
DESCRIPTION
mcookie
generates a 128-bit random hexadecimal number for use with the X authority
system. Typical usage:
-
xauth add :0 . `mcookie`
The "random" number generated is actually the output of the MD5 message
digest fed with various pieces of random information: the current time, the
process id, the parent process id, the contents of an input file (if
-f
is specified), and several bytes of information from the first of the
following devices which is present:
/dev/random,
/dev/urandom,
files in
/proc,
/dev/audio.
BUGS
The entropy in the generated 128-bit is probably quite small (and,
therefore, vulnerable to attack) unless a non-pseudorandom number generator
is used (e.g.,
/dev/random
under Linux).
It is assumed that none of the devices opened will block.
FILES
/dev/random
/dev/urandom
/dev/audio
/proc/stat
/proc/loadavg
SEE ALSO
X(1),
xauth(1),
md5sum(1)
AVAILABILITY
The mcookie command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- BUGS
-
- FILES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AVAILABILITY
-
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