[148360] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: [Cryptography] Kindle as crypto hardware
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Wed Dec 4 21:49:27 2013
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:46:04 -0800
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMm+LwhKSTwjEymooA6K_qukF0E9k+GFgVg-w-12ENqUHKtkpQ@mail.g
mail.com>
Errors-To: cryptography-bounces+crypto.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@metzdowd.com
At 08:19 AM 12/4/2013, you wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Theodore Ts'o
><<mailto:tytso@mit.edu>tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 10:40:25AM -0500, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>(BTW, my quick pricing of a Rasberry Pi with a display is not cheaper
>than an Arduino, but your milage may vary.)
>The Pi has HDMI out so it can hook into an existing display so
>depending on the application it is a wash. It also has the random
>number generator and the operating system boots from SD card which I
>find more comforting than loading up a black box via USB.
HDMI means you can plug the Pi into a newer television or monitor, if
you're not paranoid about those, and you can plug in a vanilla USB keyboard.
There isn't persistent memory on the board; the OS is installed on a
removable SD flash card, so if you need to shred anything it's the $5 flash.
As much as I like the Arduino for controlling blinky-lights and
thermostats, it's not the platform you want to use for number-crunching.
It's an 8-bit CPU running at 20 MHz, so generating ECC keys will take
unacceptably long. Spend the extra $10 for the Pi, which is at least
a 700 MHz 32-bit chip. And don't go buying that NSArrduino clone
board, which has a chip marked "ATmega328" that's actually an ARM
emulation with a radio transmitter.
Both CPUs are under $5, and if you're willing to use a serial
display, you could get one of the few PDIP ARM chips so you can plug
the chip into a socket and have nothing with memory in it remaining
on the board.
But it's probably safe enough and a lot less labor to just get a
cheap phone or Kindle that already has all the parts.
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