Wai Wu wrote:
I would like to know your opinions on commercial hardware random number generators. Are they worth the money? How do they compare to the /dev/random device? Thnx.
I've written extensively about this elsewhere. The devices are properly termed RBGs (random bit generators), and they produce very high quality, cryptographically useful random bit streams. The Intel chip on many Intel Mobos has been extensively analyzed by Paul Kocher and others. In summary, these are useful for stirring the entropy pool, but are generally have maximum bit rates that are well below what a busy server may need for random material, including ephemeral keys, nonces, padding, etc. ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
