Question

I need to generate a large random string to encrypt some passwords with in perl. The keys I am using now to encrypt with are generated from the Gibson Research Corp website. They were meant to be place holders for me to test with. Now I am looking to make something final.

I would like the key to be something enclosed in a file kinda like a SSL cert but not nearly as long, right now I am using a 64-bit key for testing I would think 1024-bit key would be a bit overkill, this key is NEVER going to be seen on the internet it is just to encrypt password in my config file from “prying” eyes more or less. The reason for it to be in file of some kind would so the encrypter could read it and the decrypter could also read and they would stay in sync using the same key rather than have to copy and paste the keys into each script and therefore have a chance of user error.

Answer 1

Using the Perl hex function, you can convert a decimal number into a hexadecimal one.

Here’s a snippet that creates a string of 32 random hex digits:

my $rand_hex = join "", map { unpack "H*", chr(rand(256)) } 1..16;

Here’s another – simpler – way to generate 32 random hex digits:

use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
my $rand_hex2 = md5_hex(rand);