On 09/20/2008 12:09 AM, IanG wrote: > Does anyone know of a cheap USB random number source?
Is $7.59 cheap enough? http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HE-280B&cat=GDT For that you get a USB audio adapter with mike jack, and then you can run turbid(tm) to produce high-quality randomness. Reference, including analytical paper plus code: http://www.av8n.com/turbid/ > As a meandering comment, it would be extremely good for us if we had > cheap pocket random number sources of arguable quality [1]. If the above is not good enough, please explain. > I've often thought that if we had an open source hardware design of > a USB random number generator ... that cost a few pennies to add > onto any other USB toy ... then we could ask the manufacturers to > throw it in for laughs. Something like a small mountable disk that > returns randoms on every block read, so the interface is trivial. I think the turbid solution is much better than a disk. -- Unlimited long-term capacity. -- Perfect forward secrecy, unlike a disk, unless you do a really good job of erasing each block after use. -- Perfect secrecy in the other direction, period. > Then, when it comes time to generate those special keys, we could > simply plug it in, run it, clean up the output in software and use > it. Hey presto, all those nasty software and theoretical > difficulties evaporate. If the above is not good enough, please explain. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
