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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:19:04 ADT
Bill Frantz (frantz@netcom.com)
Thu, 25 Jun 1998 09:27:40 -0800
At 11:03 PM -0800 6/24/98, Alex Alten wrote:
>At 08:37 PM 6/24/98 -0700, Tom Weinstein wrote:
>>available, but the best thing is a good hardware RNG.
>
>The only good RNG will be a hardware RNG. And if you
>are really picky, then the only good RNG is a NSA
>certified hardware RNG, like on a Fortezza card.
I believe that this assertion is overstated. UI events are a good source
of entropy. In addition, common PCs seem to have a good source of entropy
in the phase jitter between their CPU clock counter and their real time
clock chip. (At least the output of a generator based on this source
passes FIPS-140 with very little processing.)
The part that scares me is that this source needs to be validated for every
PC design. However code that uses it will run on any PC, including the
Conectix VirtualPC software for the Macintosh.
Any source of entropy that you are planning to depend on should be checked
against the FIPS-140 tests. For high security applications, you should
follow the FIPS and check the source at every system startup.
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Bill Frantz | If hate must be my prison | Periwinkle -- Consulting
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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:19:04 ADT