best way to create entropy?

Fri Oct 12 01:11:30 UTC 2012

In message <50776926.1030704 at enger.us>, "Robert M. Enger" writes:
> On 10/11/2012 5:08 PM, Jonathan Lassoff wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:01 PM, 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
> >> some tasks better than others?
> > Personally, I've used and recommend this USB stick: http://www.entropykey.c
> o.uk/
> >
> > Internally, it uses diodes that are reverse-biased just ever so close
> > to the breakdown voltage such that they randomly flip state back and
> > forth.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > jof
> >
> Intel claims to include a hardware Digital Random Number Generator (DRNG) in 
> its later generation chips.  Is their offering inadequate/discredited?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391367,00.asp
> http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/embedded/innovation/security/walker-article-secu
> rity
> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-random-number-generato
> r-drng-software-implementation-guide/

Which is about time.  It's not like this hasn't been needed for 10+ years.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org