[145818] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Randomness, Quantum Mechanics - and Cryptography
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marsh Ray)
Tue Sep 7 13:36:14 2010
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Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:21:18 -0500
From: Marsh Ray <marsh@extendedsubset.com>
To: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
CC: Jerry Leichter <leichter@lrw.com>,
"cryptography@metzdowd.com List" <cryptography@metzdowd.com>
In-Reply-To: <4C85A826.90503@av8n.com>
On 09/06/2010 09:49 PM, John Denker wrote:
>
> If anybody can think of a practical attack against the randomness
> of a thermal noise source, please let us know. By "practical" I
> mean to exclude attacks that use such stupendous resources that
> it would be far easier to attack other elements of the system.
Blast it with RF for one.
Typically the natural thermal noise amounts to just a few millivolts,
and so requires a relatively sensitive A/D converter. This makes it
susceptible to injected "unnatural noise" overloading the conversion and
changing most of the output bits to predictable values.
Using digital outputs from an enclosed module with enough shielding
could probably prevent it. But there are plenty of environments which
are too small (e.g., smart cards) or are potentially in the hands of the
attacker for an extended period of time (smart cards, DRM devices, power
meters, etc.).
- Marsh
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