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A good number of Intel processors have hardware rngs. http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-random-number-generator-drng-software-implementati
by steve918 13y ago
A good number of Intel processors have hardware rngs.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-random-number-generator-drng-software-implementation-guide http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-rando...
Of course they're not on $35 boards, but the server machines you are using may already have this.
- shawnz 13y agoIntel's RDRAND is mentioned in the article as well, near the end. I suspect this article is doing so well because of the recent realization of Intel's involvement with the NSA, and the high potential for backdoors to be included in such a technology.
- mahyarm 13y agoBroadcom is a similarly huge USA company in ARM computers & networking, are we sure they haven't been involved with the NSA either?
- PeterisP 13y agoWe can't be sure, but it should be much easier to audit a small system like Pi, rather than an Intel processor that, above all, can be remotely patched.
- btian 13y agoIntel processor can be remotely patched?! Then why did Intel spend $475m to fix the FDIV bug?
- ethomson 13y agoI'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the FDIV bug - or heck, even the much more recent (1997!) F00F bug - might not be so contemporary or represent the state of the art of Intel processors.
- dgl 13y agoPresumably they learnt from their mistake, the Pentium Pro was the first generation where the microcode could be updated. (An ancient /. article, byte article it links to is dead: http://slashdot.org/story/00/10/27/126258/upgrade-your-pentiums-microcode http://slashdot.org/story/00/10/27/126258/upgrade-your-penti...)
- tptacek 13y agoHuh? Much easier to audit a Broadcom SOC? Than what, auditing deliberately obfuscated hardware designs like the modern DirecTV smartcards? The idea that it's in any sense easy to "audit" the Raspberry Pi's hardware is head-explodey. No you can't. This is pure back-rationalization. You like the Raspberry Pi. You don't like Intel Corporation. So you come up with a reason why the R-Pi's hardware RNG might be more trustworthy than than the hardware RNG in a modern Intel computer. It's a crazy reason, not least because the R-Pi's core is produced by another giant semiconductor company.
- TerraHertz 13y agoBeing naturally suspicious, I can't help wondering why the Broadcom chip on the Raspberry Pi doesn't have full technical specs publicly available. Seriously, why not?
- marshray 13y agoTheir customers are device makers, not small time developers or end users. They just don't want to disclose the information to people without various agreements (and hard sales leads) in place.
- TerraHertz 13y agohttp://www.inquisitr.com/618772/raspberry-pi-tops-1-million-in-sales/ http://www.inquisitr.com/618772/raspberry-pi-tops-1-million-... For this particular chip, you'd think they'd make an exception. But nooooooo.... Can't have those damned hackers actually knowing the register names, addresses and bit functions. That would be unthinkable.