Re: Entropy Pool Contents

Theodore Tso
2006-11-24T00:48:59Z

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 01:10:08AM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> Disk activities are "somewhat predictable", like network traffic, and
> hence are not (or should not - have not checked it) contribute to the
> pool. Note that urandom is the device which _always_ gives you data, and
> when the pool is exhausted, returns pseudorandom data.

Plesae read the following article before making such assertions:

D. Davis, R. Ihaka, P.R. Fenstermacher, "Cryptographic
Randomness from Air Turbulence in Disk Drives", in Advances in
Cryptology -- CRYPTO '94 Conference Proceedings, edited by Yvo
G. Desmedt, pp.114--120. Lecture Notes in Computer Science
#839. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1994.
http://world.std.com/~dtd/random/forward.ps

Regards,

- Ted