[Noisebridge-discuss] Group order of Entropy Keys: hardware random number generators

[miloh]

cc'ing sfmicrocontrollers since this is one you don't hear about too often:

we are discussing the entropykey, avalanche biased junctions generating
noise fed into an arm cortex m3!
http://www.entropykey.co.uk/

my responses threaded below:

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Jonathan Foote <jtfoote at ieee.org> wrote:

> If my suspicions are correct, it wouldn't be too hard to hack up an
> open-hardware version.
>
> I'm guessing the entropykey is nothing more than a little amp for
> thermal (resistor) noise into an ADC, followed by a whitening
> algorithm. And some kind of device driver to pipe it into /dev/random.
>
>
aside from being taught that I should be wary of anything that advertises
as 'true random', I'll contribute that they do something with jxns in
avalanche mode to get the 'noise'.  They also do something with paired
devices and correlation checking to shut it down if someone tries to reduce
entropy by temperature (or some other means?).  but if the correlation
check is between n devices on a tiny thumbdrive?!? can anyone tell me what
good is that but against temperature attacks?

oh look, confirmed: http://www.entropykey.co.uk/tech/

I think I read about this last august, thinking along the same lines as you
that it should be diy'ed and characterized in different ways!



> Of course we could make a radioactive one with Mike Kan's transistor
> alpha detector trick (pop the top off an old TO-3 can transistor), or
> make an imaging-based spinthariscope, which would be cooler!
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Martin Bogomolni <martinbogo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I own two of these things, and they are truly awesome when it comes to
> > generating entropy for everything from SSL and SSH sessions, to
> > handling GPG mail.
> >
> > Great stuff.
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Tom <noisebridge at flamsmark.com> wrote:
> >> I'm planning on buying one or more Entropy Keys: hardware random number
> >> generators which connect via USB.
> >>
> >> http://www.entropykey.co.uk/
> >>
> >> The site has a great technical description, and there are Debian and
> Ubuntu
> >> packages (and source tarballs) ready to go.
> >>
> >> They have to be ordered from the UK, which makes shipping exciting, and
> >> they're cheaper if you buy a couple at a time.
> >>
> >> 1 key: £36ea
> >> 5 keys: £32ea
> >> 25 keys: £29ea
> >>
> >> If you're interested in getting one get in touch with me off-list
> *before
> >> next week's meeting*. I'm planning on getting the logistics sorted out
> this
> >> week, and placing an order on Wednesday morning.
> >>
>
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