Let's get random: Under the hood of PHP 7's CSPRNG - ZendCon & OpenEnterprise 2018

Talk given at ZendCon & OpenEnterprise 2018

Randomness is really important in many cryptographic contexts. Unfortunately, true randomness is a non-trivial achievement for computers. In fact, using weak sources of randomness can leave your application open to myriad vulnerabilities. Enter a good cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG).

We’ll discuss the importance of using good sources of randomness, the CSPRNG options we had in PHP 5, and how the new-goodness CSPRNG functions in PHP 7 work under the hood.