From owner-freebsd-arch Mon Jun 19 7: 4:40 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.40.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5966437B7FA; Mon, 19 Jun 2000 07:04:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA44780; Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:04:22 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Cc: Dan Moschuk , "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" , Mark Murray , arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: (2nd iteration) New /dev/(random|null|zero) - review, please In-reply-to: Your message of "19 Jun 2000 15:59:32 +0200." Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:04:22 +0200 Message-ID: <44778.961423462@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message , Dag-Erling Smorgrav writes: >Poul-Henning Kamp writes: >> In message , Dag-Erling Smorgrav writes: >> > The idea of built-in hardware RNGs bothers me a little. [...] >> And just because you went out and bought your RNG separately, what >> difference would it make ? If an RNG has a fingerprint, you may >> be identified by it, no matter where you bought it or how. > >Hmm, yes, that wasn't quite what I meant. I was actually thinking >about purpose-made RNGs vs. custom-made (e.g. lava lamp + webcam), the >idea being that with the latter, a) you know it doesn't contain an >intentional steganographic fingerprint and b) you have complete >control over the RNG and can vary its output in unpredictable ways >(moving the camera, changing the background...) which hopefully defeat >recognition without affecting randomness. Run your Intel built RNG through a cryptographic quality hash ? If you frustrate the output by running it though MD5 and feed a few random bits from your keyboard interrupt in there as well ? I wouldn't worry. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD coreteam member | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message