Re: Intel announcements at RSA '99

[Steven M. Bellovin]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ben Laurie writes:
>Steve Bellovin wrote:
>> 
>> Intel has announced a number of interesting things at the RSA conference.
>> The most important, to me, is the inclusion of a hardware random number
>> generator (based on thermal noise) in the Pentium III instruction set.
>> They also announced hardware support for IPSEC.
>
>An interesting question (for me, at least) is: how will I know that the
>hardware RNG is really producing stuff based on thermal noise, and not,
>say, on the serial number, some secret known to Intel, and a PRNG?

That's a very good question, especially since Pentium III's will also have
per-CPU serial numbers...

Seriously, you're already trusting your vendors.  Intel did say that the
hard part of the problem was verifying the output of the RNG; beyond that,
the driver runs SHA-1 on the output to further randomize the bits used.