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OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

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Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#81

Post by imaginenore »

WaywardGeek wrote: post #62
imaginenore wrote: post #53

Or you could just use a shitty cheap webcam and take the lower bits of each pixel (or one pixel of each 8x8 block if the compression is bad). The amount of randomness per second webcams generate is pretty insane, it's more than enough to feed the seed of a crypto PRNG function like Fortuna.

There are plenty of decent sources of entropy, like webcams and sound cards. However, they all add parts we don't need, and they don't take any care to design with security in mind. Eventually, a good open hardware TRNG should be cheaper, more reliable, easier to use, and more secure than any of those solutions, IMO.

> they all add parts we don't need

What are you worried about exactly? Space? There are really really tiny cameras for smartphones that are mass-produced, and they are very noisy, which is perfect.

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#82

Post by Taniwha »

toong wrote: post #50
Taniwha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well you have to consider me (the designer, the guy putting the original code in the device that you want to verify and make sure that it's not someone else's code) as trustworthy. After all I'm the one who's trying to protect the integrity of my product, I'm not going to give you a compressible bitstream if I can possible help it - and I'm going to publish the bitstream I am using so you can check

I think the parents point is that you generated the random-bitstream somehow, starting from a specific seed. If you know the seed, you could regenerates the random bitstream with a lot less bytes (=secretly compressible). So now you have some extra room left on the ROM to embed your malicious firmware and still be able to dump the original full 256k. If you start with a known image/photo (not yours, some public domai…

or we could use a hardware RNG ..... and run it through a whitener just to make it more interesting ....

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#83

Post by PhantomGremlin »

If this gadget sells for under $50 (which it certainly should) I might consider buying one, just for the fun of it.

But I haven't seen anyone here mention ID Quantique, one of the companies that the "big boys" use for random numbers. They're in Switzerland: http://idquantique.com/

Admittedly not open hardware, but FWIW they claim:

   QUANTIS has been evaluated and certified by the
   Swiss Federal Office of Metrology (also known as
   METAS), the Swiss national organization in charge
   of measurement science, testing and compliance.
   It confirmed that the quality of its random output
   complies with the highest requirements.
The minor detail about buying from ID Quantique is that their cheapest USB product sells for about 990 euros, or about $1250.[1]

I know it's apples and oranges, but anyone interested in this product should at least be aware of some alternatives.

[1] http://idquantique.com/component/content/article.html?id=83

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#84

Post by PhantomGremlin »

tribaal wrote: post #3

Well, I'm happy to see that for once, they understand that the single most important thing is that it's verifiable . So many crypto-related systems ask you to trust the provider implicitly it's not even funny. I don't care who you are, if I can't look at the source (all the way down) of your product and build it myself, it's not going to make the cut as a "secure" system. You can provide additional guarantees and pro…

> if I can't look at the source (all the way down) of your product and build it myself, it's not going to make the cut as a "secure" system

Other have already linked to https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/hardware3.html and if your biggest concern is verifying it, then what could be simpler than detecting radioactive decay events?

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#85

Post by kabouseng »

rsync wrote: post #64
malgorithms wrote: post #55

A question for the designers (Paul?) about verifiability. In the software world you can effectively choose from 2 levels of review. You can (1) review the source code of a project and convince yourself it's fine. Or (2) you can assume/hope that experts have done that, download the software, and just verify you have an identical copy of what everyone else is reviewing. (Ideally using signatures of the authors and revi…

I'm just brainstorming here ... but couldn't your software perform a test on the expected latencies and error rates of the hardware (on a very deep level) such that any additional (or subtracted) components would alter them in obvious ways ?

I suspect random device variances will screw up the accuracy of your tests.

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#86

Post by PhantomGremlin »

Taniwha wrote: post #41
dspillett wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're going to kickstart it and release it Do you have any timescales for that yet, or are such decisions still heavily dependant on feedback from testing?

testing is good, no known roadblocks, we planning on a Decemberish time frame, we think we have a final firmware load at this point. We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup we'll do a small in-house run for those who want to pay a premium for early delivery and then possibly a slower run depending on demand.

> We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup

I've been in at the ground floor of a number of successful hardware startups. One of which had a number of pick and place machines, IR reflow ovens, and all sorts of related manufacturing equipment. So I'm quite familiar with the field.

My very simple, very emphatic advice about a "pick-and-place" machine is: NO NO NO NO NO, a thousand times N0!!!

Maybe it's something you have to do in NZ. But in some other parts of the world, if I blindfolded you and let you stumble around you would probably trip over a pick-and-place machine in about 5 minutes! They're everywhere.

In other words, unless your primary purpose is to bootstrap yourself into being a contract manufacturer, you have absolutely no business owning your own pick-and-place machine.

A design as simple as yours could be manufactured by almost anyone in the world. It's so simple that most of them could do it in their sleep.

Just contract the manufacturing out and be done with it.

Your quixotic effort at stuffing your own boards reminds me of the perhaps apocryphal story of, in the 1970's, WDC designing a chipset that was used in the DEC LSI-11 minicomputer.[1] They had a fab, and in one week they could make enough chips for DEC to sell minicomputers for a year. "Okay, the LSI-11 chips are done. Now WTF do we do with this fab for the other 51 weeks of the year???"

Yeah, in the old days IC fabs were cheap enough that everyone and his brother owned one. And they had large fixed costs. And unless they were utilized around the clock they lost money.

To a large extent stuff like pick-and-place machines are the same. Sure it's orders of magnitude cheaper. But still, maybe it takes you a week or two to build some of your boards. What do you do with your equipment for the other 50 weeks of the year? Is that the business you want to be in?

Of course, if that is the business you want to be in, then OK.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital#1970s

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#87

Post by kabouseng »

malgorithms wrote: post #55

A question for the designers (Paul?) about verifiability. In the software world you can effectively choose from 2 levels of review. You can (1) review the source code of a project and convince yourself it's fine. Or (2) you can assume/hope that experts have done that, download the software, and just verify you have an identical copy of what everyone else is reviewing. (Ideally using signatures of the authors and revi…

Would it be possible to publish JTAG scan chain results. This isn't fool proof, any device not connected to the JTAG chain will not show up, and illegal devices may spoof their responses.

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#88

Post by Taniwha »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #86
Taniwha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

testing is good, no known roadblocks, we planning on a Decemberish time frame, we think we have a final firmware load at this point. We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup we'll do a small in-house run for those who want to pay a premium for early delivery and then possibly a slower run depending on demand.

> We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup I've been in at the ground floor of a number of successful hardware startups. One of which had a number of pick and place machines, IR reflow ovens, and all sorts of related manufacturing equipment. So I'm quite familiar with the field. My very simple, very emphatic advice about a "pick-and-place" machine is: NO NO NO NO NO, a thousand times N0!!! Maybe it's somethin…

It really depends on the demand, I do plan on doing a small run myself - as I said as a kickstarter premium - that lets me test out the manufacturing support hardware (board test and programming jigs) and provide boards really quickly -if the volumes are high enough then yes, we're off to Shenzhen (I was there in May, I'll be back in December)

We have a CHEAP (~$8k) P&P machine, it's great for doing prototypes (you load it with the 10 most common components and hand place the rest) and VERY small production runs (10-20 panelised boards is probably a limit)

Re: OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator

#89

Post by malandrew »

On a related note, is there any device out there that lets you create a private key and "burn" it to that device in a way that the key cannot be taken off the device and you instead use the device the same way you use SSH_AUTH_SOCK?

Ultimately, it would be nice to have a way where private keys can not be copied.

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