[116740] in Cypherpunks
New cryptographically strong random number generator
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Thu Aug 19 15:32:08 1999
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 07:10:38 +1200 (NZST)
Message-ID: <199908191910.HAA14592@kakapo.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
I have just been informed of a new cryptographically strong random number
generator which can be run on most recent PC's. It's slow but effective.
To use it, you need a copy of VMware and a copy of Windows '95. Install
VMware, then set up Windows '95 inside it. Win'95 will detect VMware's
virtual devices as new hardware, go through an orgy of reconfiguring itself,
and reboot. After three or four reboots, it'll decide it's finished and
perform one final reboot. At this point it'll detect new hardware... lather,
rinse, repeat. The whole process seems to be a chaotic oscillation, it may
be possible to use the techniques described in the recent CHES talk to
analyse its performance. I'm sure this would make an interesting research
topic for someone.
Peter.
