full-disclosure - Re: how i stopped worrying and loved the backdoor

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Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 23:10:09 -0800
From: BMF <badmotherfsckr@...il.com>
To: Dan Kaminsky <dan@...para.com>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: how i stopped worrying and loved the backdoor

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Dan Kaminsky <dan@...para.com> wrote:
> Don't we have hardware RNG in most motherboard chipsets nowadays?

Do we? By what mechanism do they operate? Thermal noise seems the
easiest way to go although I have always preferred the idea of
sampling random radioactive decay simply for the purity of the
immediate result. What is the quality of the entropy of the devices
you speak of? How fast do they generate entropy? I have heard nothing
about this. How could I tell if my machine had hw rng built in?

Some i810 series chipsets have hw rng. There is also the Intel 80802
Firmware Hub chip that nobody seems to use anymore. I have heard of
people pointing webcams at lava lamps and such to get random numbers.

BMF

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