RFR 8024253: ThreadLocal random can use SecureRandom for the initial seed

[Alan Bateman]

On 16/09/2013 15:00, Paul Sandoz wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> Nice observation about name resolving.
>
> On my MacBook, if i switch off the wifi, then 7 addresses are returned 4 for the en0 and 3 for lo0. Seems overkill to use all of them and the sub-interefaces, if any. I agree with Doug, selecting the first interface's MAC address is probably sufficient.
>
We periodically come across environments where they are a lot (as in 
hundreds) of network interfaces configured and might indeed be overkill 
to use bits from all of them.

On getHardwareAddress then there are platforms where you need to be root 
or have special privileges to get the mac address so this is one reason 
why it might return null. I see Doug's patch handles this and I'm just 
mentioning in that it may not be source of bits in some environments.

For the security manager case there is a permission check to avoid 
leaking details about the environment to untrusted code. So to be useful 
when running with a security manager will require it to be done as a 
privileged action.

-Alan.