The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#2Perhaps this is a new application for the pi? A dedicated entropy appliance could be useful
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#3What barriers keep thermal random number generators from being widely available? Or are they actually?
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#4What barriers keep thermal random number generators from being widely available? Or are they actually?
Though I can't speak to they're adoption in actual hardware, thermal noise generators are apparently a common way to generate random numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generat...). I would be interested to hear details on how the pi's generator works.
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#5Perhaps this is a new application for the pi? A dedicated entropy appliance could be useful
Heh, there was a company that offered just such a beast, basically a network socket and an API to fetch a random number. I thought it was a really subtle joke (like that time I carried around a Diet Coke as my Halloween costume) but once people connected the dots between "Ok, you care so much about a cryptographically secure random number generator you buy an appliance that does nothing else, and then you talk to it over the network..."
As I was building IR beacons for mobile robots at the time, it led me to suggest an IR LED that was connected to a thermal emission source, then you could pick up random numbers by sampling the IR spectrum for a some period of time in your area. At least that way you don't know when the randomness was sampled (well not exactly), and your sniffer has to capture all radiated IR in all directions to ensure it has a complete history if it wants to back correlate it. Harder but still not as simple as just putting it in your machine. (which if you care enough you will do)
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#6A good number of Intel processors have hardware rngs.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-rando...
Of course they're not on $35 boards, but the server machines you are using may already have this.
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#7It may well be that small hardware could be better for generating keys, as it is much easier to audit the total system, and I'd trust it more than an Intel processor with known remote patching capabilities.
If you're security-sensitive then it could be good having a small, dedicated system like the Pi, and make sure that your private key never leaves it.
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#8Does anyone have a link for a spec for the RNG? Specifically, where does it get its entropy from? Couldn't find it in the source link. Only mention I could find is a vague mention of "thermal noise" which could mean anything.
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#9Do hw rng's get a test suite certificate(NIST's?), like a Swiss watch, or like a optical sextant's `Certificate of Errors'? Tables of mean, standard deviation, etc, for expected physical dependent parameters(what: speed? temp? ...)?
Re: The Raspberry Pi’s Hardware Random Number Generator
#10Is there a way to seed /dev/urandom and /dev/random from it?