[157254] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: best way to create entropy?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Lassoff)
Thu Oct 11 20:26:05 2012
In-Reply-To: <CAAAwwbWAoy60NBquCX8TeOcChC8Odpw3mRBAgzkcTSqFAN20wg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:25:37 -0700
From: Jonathan Lassoff <jof@thejof.com>
To: Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com>
Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/11/12, shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@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
