[Ach] question / recommendations on hardware RNG sources?

[ianG]

This is indeed the problem with RNGs.  They are hard to recommend; 
whichever statement you come up with, it likely takes the follower down 
a rabbit hole, which is no good recommendation.

In the sense of what the paper is trying to achieve, I generally 
recommend that, if you don't care that much, use what the platform 
provides.  If you care more than that, you have to write your own. 
There is no in-between, ... for the reasons that you are discovering, 
every 'product' out there has to be audited in depth to find out if it 
is kosher random, and once you do that, you may as well just write your own.

Now, because of the doctrine of 'best practices' we can also say that 
whoever is reading the paper also doesn't care that much.  If they cared 
more, they would research it all themselves.  So the recommendation can 
logically be reduced to:

       Use what the platform provides.

iang

ps; for selfish reasons of being involved in 2 RNG projects at the 
moment, I actually benefited from the post :)

On 10/12/13 17:23 PM, L. Aaron Kaplan wrote:
> Should we add this to the paper?
>
>
> On Dec 10, 2013, at 3:21 PM, christian mock <cm at coretec.at> wrote:
>
>> Two more designs that haven't been mentioned yet:
>>
>> http://www.jtxp.org/tech/xr232web.htm
>> (german only, zener-based)
>>
>> http://www.jtxp.org/tech/xr232usb_en.htm
>> (comparator-based)
>>
>
> Should we add this to the paper?
> Frankly speaking: I did not test them. So, I don't know if I can wholeheartedly recommend them.
>
> a.
>
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> // L. Aaron Kaplan <kaplan at cert.at> - T: +43 1 5056416 78
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