Re: PIII kernel support- hardware randomizer
Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 18:25:21 +0100 (BST)
> Brian Hall <brianw.hall@compaq.com> said:
> > I am currently using an overclocked Celeron 300 (now 450). The only real
> > interest I have in the PIII and above is the hardware random number
> > generator (using thermal noise). I have seen discussion of PIII kernel
> > patches, but not about the random number generator. Does support for
> > this exist or is it planned, and is there a repository for PIII patches?
>
> I'd be _very_ suspicious of something like that. To get a decent
> distribution is probably quite hard and not done routinely. Besides, there
> is _no_ way to check if it is misbehaving or feeding you a deterministic
> sequence. Fine for games, perhaps.
Its true the NSA might have the keys to the "RNG" or it might have magic
switches. However if the rest of our RNG is secure then I can't see it
being anything but useful (once info becomes available) to feed their
hardware RNG into the entropy pool of /dev/random as another source
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