Re: PIII kernel support- hardware randomizer

Folkert van Heusden (fvh@keetweej.demon.nl)
Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:07:03 -0100


Alan Cox wrote:
> 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

[ from other message ]
> One thing Intel are good at is back compatibility. Everything should be fine.
> You can't use the KNI stuff but thats about it. 2.0.37 will even ident
> a PIII and turn off the serial number

Maybe this serial is also nice as an initial entropy pool-
source? Not for the local system, but for the network-point-of
-view (/dev/random is used for tcp/ip seq.nr. generating?)

-- 
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Folkert van Heusden
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