This is forwarded from:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libxml2/+bug/983810

"In an attempt to address oCERT 2011-003, libxml2 now seeds its hash table with using rand(). This is broken and lame:

Firstly, srand() and rand() are not thread-safe, even though libxml2 is supposed to be thread-safe (when adequately initialized by the program). The fix is easy: replace srand() with a variable assignment, and replace rand() with rand_r().

Secondly, using time(NULL) as a seed totally misses the point. It is trivial for a potential attacker to guess the value of time(NULL). That's the current UTC current time rounded to the second."