cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random harvest.c hash.c hash.h nehemiah.c nehemiah.h probe.c randomdev.c randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar

[Mark Murray]

Richard Coleman writes:
> > If it is felt that further whitening of the VIA C3 RNG is needed,
> > then I believe that Yarrow would be overkill, and that a much smaller
> > hash function will be sufficient.
> 
> What do you have in mind?  AES is already one of the faster ciphers 
> around.  You could reduce the number of rounds used for AES, but it 
> would be hard to estimate the cryptographic strength.

The C3 chip has AES on board, so something like this may do the trick:

key = C3RNG();
seed ^= C3RNG(); /* seed is static */
output = encryptAES(key, seed);

Cryptographic strength is of lesser importance here, as the key
input is Very Nicely Random(tm), however AES's speed and spectral
qualities make it a good choice. It is important to remember that
the hash is purely there to destroy any trends/tendencies that the
hardware generator may have, and for that purpose an LFSR may work
just fine. The hash is a "Whitener", and its requirements here are
that its output spectrum is flat.

M
--
Mark Murray
iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH