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video_entropyd
For security reasons (when doing network traffic or generating secure keys for example) one wants as much entropy-data in the kernel random-driver as possible. The random-driver takes partially care for this. But in situations in where there's a lot of demand for entropy-data, it might not be able to gather enough entropy-data by itself.
That's where this program is for: adding entropy-data to the kernel-driver. It does that by fetching 2 images from a video4linux-device (with a random delay in between), calculating the difference between those two and then calculating the number of information-bits in that data. After that, the data with the number-of-entropy-bits is submitted to the kernel-random-driver.
After that, the program exits (when run from crontab) or sleeps a random time before redoing the same process.
Download
Changes
Changes in version 0.8:
- now checks the quality of the random data
Changes in version 0.7:
- no longer needs fvhlib
Changes in version 0.6:
- every time video_entropyd is started, it will now loop until the kernel entropy-spool is totally filled up
- some code was moved to a library
Changes in version 0.5:
- added logging; video_entropyd now tells through syslogd how much bits are added
Changes in version 0.4:
- added makefile
- data is now unbiased before send to the kernel entropy-spool (this is important!)
Changes in version 0.3:
- the program now uses the structures as defined in the kernel-include-files
- fixed bug that made it submit data that was not so random as expected :-)
Changes in version 0.2:
- the program would add 0 bits when a device has only 1 capture-buffer. that is now fixed
Links
AudioEntropyd (or 'AED') is like VideoEntropyd, the difference is that AED gets entropy-data from a soundcard or any other sounddevice.
inventgeek.com - use a radiation-source from a smoke-dector and a webcam for generating random numbers.
fourmilab - another article about generating true random numbers using an radioactive source.
This website: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/rnd/ lists a whole lot of links to information on entropy-gathering on computers.
lavarnd.org - generating random values using a lavalamp and a webcam.
Hardware solutions
Soekris engineering sells a board for aprox. $80 with a hardware RNG on it.
ComScire has an USB solution producing upto 1Mb of random data per second.
Orion has an RS232 solution producing 7.6Kb per second.
hg400 USB2.0 connected hardware RNG. data-rates from 16Mb upto 32Mb.
protego.se an RS232 and USB solution.
qrbg - a USB connected quantum RNG. 12Mb/s
idquantique - another quantum solution. 4 upto 16Mb
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