[673] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Random numbers from the '60's...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brett Carswell)
Fri May 2 09:21:20 1997
From: Brett Carswell <brettc@tritro.com.au>
To: "'Bill Stewart'" <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: "'cryptography@c2.net'" <cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 11:15:33 +1000
I'm pretty sure that what Phil is referring to is using the noise
generated by the preamp without a microphone connected. As far as I'm
aware this is similar to shot noise in resistors which generates pretty
nice random bit sequences.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bill Stewart [SMTP:stewarts@ix.netcom.com]
>Sent: Friday, May 02, 1997 7:41 AM
>To: Phil Karn
>Cc: lavarand@sgi.com; cryptography@c2.net
>Subject: Re: Random numbers from the '60's...
>
>At 07:07 PM 4/29/97 -0700, Phil Karn wrote:
>>>What scares me is http://lavarand.sgi.com/pat_trade.html
>>Somebody really ought to burst their, uh, bubble and point to the
>>/dev/random code that's been in Linux for several years now. And in
>>KA9Q NOS for some time before that.
>>Who needs a camera and a lava lamp when soundblaster cards with noisy
>>microphone preamps are nearly universal?
>
>The Lava Lamp is nice and visual, though.
>On the other hand, isn't the noise from blowing on a microphone chaotic,
>due to various turbulence effects? It's definitely prior art,
>as is hashing the physical-world input data.
>
># Thanks; Bill
># Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
># You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
># (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
>
