Re: random translator

[Rian Hunter]

Like a lot of the GNU/Hurd user crowd I was faced with this same problem 
and also like a lot of the GNU/Hurd user crowd I just wrote my own. My 
translator setup is made for Debian and it has some sample boot scripts 
tha start up egd and compile my translator. There is a readme file in 
the archive, i don't really remember all the whosits and whatsits about 
how it works but the gist is that it is a HURD translator that is 
install in random and urandom and when given a read request it siphons 
the bytes from egd. It implements the same behavior as Linux and FreeBSD 
random and urandom devices.

You can find it at 
http://rian.thelaststop.net/mystuff/files/random-egd.tar.gz

Thanks.
-rian

Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> At Thu, 31 Mar 2005 09:18:33 -0800,
> Stou Sandalski <stou.sandalski@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Considering that the security of most cryptographic systems rests on
> > the quality of the rng, a half-assed solution is definitely not what i
> > am after. ("Hey! you are the guy that wrote the rng for hurd, that let
> > those hax0rs totally brutalize the world")
>
>
> The quality of my random translator should be pretty sound, given that
> it uses GnuPG's random pool.  However, it may need to be extended a
> bit to poll entropy from a kernel device.
>  
>
> > So there should be a separate entropy translator? That would actually
> > eliminate the issue of how to use hardware entropy generators
> > (including that stuff that supposedly comes on some of the Intel
> > boards/procs).
>
>
> The only biggish thing that's missing is a random device in gnumach
> which delivers entropy from the hardware (timing IRQ events, etc.
> It's not perfect, but the best thing you can get from standard PC
> hardware).
>
> Thanks,
> Marcus