[12771] in Cypherpunks
Re: Random #'s via Sound Cards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rusty H. Hodge)
Sat Apr 30 03:47:48 1994
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 00:45:09 -0700
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: rustman@netcom.com (Rusty H. Hodge)
At 9:03 PM 4/29/94 -0700, Phil Karn wrote:
>The easiest way to get true random numbers on a PC nowadays is
>with a sound board, preferably 16 bit. Just MD-5 hash some gibberish
>speech and/or background noise.
Great idea. Hell, you don't even really need random gibbirish; most sound
cards have such poor analog audio front ends, you could just turn up the
gain and look at the LSBs. I've mostly used the mid-level Mac products
from Digidesign, and even they have analog noise that is easily detectable
in the lower bits.
And for MacPGP- most Macs now have a sound-in; you could either do the
noise trick again (won't work as well in 8-bit, probably), or just base it
on the backgroud sounds.
Rusty H. Hodge, Hodge Productions <rustman@netcom.com> (714) 532-6800
GAT d--@ -p+(p---) c++ !l u++ m+(*) s+/++ !n(-) h* f+(*) !g w++ t@ r- y*
