best way to create entropy?

Fri Oct 12 04:27:56 UTC 2012

I know that a popular method for generating random bit streams is to take radio (stellar) noise and convert it into a digital bit stream.  Very popular among crypto geeks.

Steven Naslund

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan White [mailto:dwhite at olp.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 10:55 PM
To: Jonathan Lassoff
Cc: North American Network Operators Group
Subject: Re: best way to create entropy?

On 10/11/12 17:08 -0700, 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.co.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.

+1.

--
Dan White