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Date:      Wed, 22 Oct 2003 07:04:53 -0700
From:      Michael Sierchio <kudzu@tenebras.com>
To:        security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: hardware crypto and SSL?
Message-ID:  <3F968E85.1030902@tenebras.com>
In-Reply-To: <3F9676FB.9020107@centtech.com>
References:  <20031022032740.GA2605@dub.net> <6.0.0.22.0.20031021233604.0807f8a0@209.112.4.2> <3F9676FB.9020107@centtech.com>

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Eric Anderson wrote:

> The new VIA Eden-N processors have built in high-speed AES encryption 

Forgive me, but that's really not important -- for SSL the bulk
encryption algorithm is usually RC4 (oops, ARCFOUR ;-), which
is efficient in software .  It's the handshake and public key
operations that really benefit from the use of HW crypto.

In which case the currently-supported cards (either by the
OpenBSD /dev/crypto scheme ported by Sam Leffler, or those
directly supported in the OpenSSL engine) all work fine.

IOW the current Soekris boards help quite a bit, and they
also help because they have a HW RBG which actually stirs
the entropy pool for /dev/random -- very helpful for not
running out of random bits on machines that have no
keyboard or mouse.




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