RE: Entropy from net devices - keyboard & IDE just as 'bad' [was Re: [PATCH] let Net Devices feed Entropy, updated (1/2)]

From: David Schwartz (davids@webmaster.com)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 17:46:29 EST


> > To what level of accuracy do you think you can measure when
> > interrupts
> > occur?

> Better than the necessary 1 jiffie on non-i386 platforms and some
> i386 platforms.

        On those platforms, you simply can't have good entropy and still have user
accounts on the box with the default hardware. Sorry, the hardware just
doesn't permit it. You would have to set up some secure way to draw entropy
off an external pool, there's just nothing else you can do. (I believe there
are non-x87 platforms that have good timers, just not all of them.)

        DS

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 23 2001 - 21:00:32 EST