[146960] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
[Cryptography] Thoughts on hardware randomness sources
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marcus D. Leech)
Tue Sep 10 12:01:47 2013
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:59:37 -0400
From: "Marcus D. Leech" <mleech@ripnet.com>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Errors-To: cryptography-bounces+crypto.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@metzdowd.com
I wonder what people's opinions are on things like the randomsound
daemon that is available for Linux.
Similarly, any hardware with an ADC input can be used as a hardware
random noise source, simply by cranking up the gain to suitable levels
where the low-order bit is sampling thermal noise.
I currently play in the Software Defined Radio space, and there are
these very-cheap SDR "dongles" that could easily be used as a hardware
random noise source.
I think it would be hard for NSA to hack *all* hardware that includes an
ADC and some gain in front of it, since there's a dizzying array of it
available, cheaply, for PC hardware.
A related issue is getting sites to *use* enhanced random sources, even
when "easy and cheap".
--
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org
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