Stephan Mueller wrote: > Am Sonntag, 10. November 2013, 17:31:07 schrieb Clemens Ladisch: >> In the case of CPUs, the jitter you observe in delta >> times results in part from the complexities of the inner state, and in >> part from real random noise. The first part is deterministic and might >> be predicted by anyone who has enough knowledge about the CPU's >> internals. > > Right, and that is why I tried to eliminate the CPU mechanisms that may be > having a deterministic impact. If I miss a mechanism or your have other > suggestions, please help me.
Many CPUs allow to disable branch prediction, but this is very vendor specific (try to find MSR documentation). The biggest offender probably is the out-of-order execution engine, which cannot be disabled. >>> When you ask for testing of stuck values, what shall I really test for? >>> Shall I test adjacent measurements for the same or alternating values? >> >> Same or alternating delta time values happen even on random CPUs. You >> need a theory of how random and non-random CPUs work, and how this >> difference affects the delta times, before you can test for that. > > Are you telling me that I should invent a formula and apply it? I was not implying that the theory has nothing to do with the physical device. It must correctly _describe_ the relevant physical processes. >>> The test for the same values is caught with the Von-Neumann unbiaser. >> >> No, the von Neumann unbiaser is run on the whitened bitstream, i.e., >> _after_ the folding operation. > > The folding is whitened? How do you reach that conclusion? Yes, the folding is > my (very simple) post-processing. But I am not calling it whitened as all > statistical problems the underlying variations have *will* be still visible in > the folded value. If you don't want to call it "whitening", call it "randomness extraction" instead. But its input is a series of delta times like this: 00000000000000000000000001010011 00000000000000000000000010011010 00000000000000000000000001011011 00000000000000000000000001100100 00000000000000000000000010111000 and the purpose of the folding is to remove these zero patterns. > What would you expect me to do when I should do to come up with an entropy > estimate that I not already have done? I do not expect you (or anybody) to be able to come up with a correct entropy estimate for CPU jitter. > There are so many assessments on entropy I make, I am surprised that I > am said to have no entropy assessment. Again: Shannon entropy assumes that you have a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables. And you cannot prove these properties from the output; you need to know the process that generates the values. Regards, Clemens -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-crypto" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
