best way to create entropy?

Fri Oct 12 00:25:37 UTC 2012

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/11/12, shawn wilson <ag4ve.us at gmail.com> wrote:
>> in the past, i've done many different things to create entropy -
>> encode videos, watch youtube, tcpdump -vvv > /dev/null, compiled a
>> kernel. but, what is best? just whatever gets your cpu to peak or are
>
> You are referring to  the entropy pool used for  /dev/random  and
> crypto operations ?
>
>
> You could  setup a  video capture card  or radio tuner card,  tune it into
> a good noise source,  and arrange for   the bit stream to get  written
>  to  /dev/random

Yes, but then you're also introducing a way for an external attacker
to transmit data that can be mixed into your entropy pool.

While certainly a cool hack, I don't think anything like this would be
safe for cryptographic use.

</two cents>

Cheers,
jof