Cipher.getInstance is too slow

Question

I have the following line of code that is taking less than a second on my computer (windows 7) and about 20 seconds on a Redhat server :

Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance(TRANSFORMATION);

where TRANSFORMATION is defind as :

private static final String TRANSFORMATION = "Blowfish/ECB/PKCS5Padding";

What could be the source of such behaviour ?

Thanks.

Misshape

Answer 1

Initialization of the Bouncy Castle provider and - probably - a slow /dev/random.

Giza

Thanks for the quick answer, but I don't want you to be mislead by the mention of redhat and windows because I have also tested on another redhat and it is taking less than a second too. – Misshape

A different CPU (e.g. a newer Intel) can already change the characteristics of /dev/random, so take a look at that. – Giza

In the case that /dev/random is slow what can I do about it ? – Misshape

Check which applications use /dev/random and where possible switch them over to /dev/urandom. Or add devices that generate entropy for /dev/random. I had a similar issue on Ubuntu with a Java application. I'll check if there is an easy solution targeting Java. BTW you can easily check the speed of /dev/random by simply reading bytes from it (using dd command). Note that it should be a bit slow. – Giza

Its also happening in eclipse too. What can I do to fast it up? – Cinnabar