Other Directory Sites: SeekWonder | Directory Owners Forum
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:07 ADT
Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Mon, 06 Jul 1998 18:46:51 -0400
Ben Laurie writes:
> Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >
> > "William H. Geiger III" writes:
> > > I am looking at information on pulling random data from a Geiger counter
> > > for use in crypto aplications.
> > >
> > > I plan on using a RM-60 from Aware Electronics:
> > >
> > > http://www.aw-el.com/index.htm
> >
> > John Walker has a cool page on a similar gadget he built and wrote
> > software for. Check out
> >
> > http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
>
> Seems to me like he's being very conservative about the entropy of the
> data source - 1 bit for two (detected) decays. Surely we can get a bit
> (or two) more out of it than that?
This is cryptography. Those that are conservative live. Those that are
"risk-oriented" end up as "don't let this happen to you" stories in
the pages of a future David Kahn's book on the history of
cryptography.
Personally, I don't know if one bit per two decays is sufficiently
conservative for my tastes.
People really have to get it through their heads that this is one
field where, when you don't know an answer, you *have* to behave as
though the worst is true, not the best.
Perry
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:07 ADT