X Developer Keith Packard's ChaosKey Hardware RNG Is Almost Here

[phoronix]

Phoronix: X Developer Keith Packard's ChaosKey Hardware RNG Is Almost Here

Veteran X.Org/X developer Keith Packard along with well known open-source advocate Bdale Garbee have been working on an "inexpensive yet robust" USB-based hardware random number generator...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ChaosKey-1.0-2016

[DarkFoss]

Fantastic... just need a Tardis to plug it into.

[starshipeleven]

Now this is cool. Is it used mostly for cryptographics right?

[boxie]

Now this is cool. Is it used mostly for cryptographics right?

Anything that needs a source of random I guess

[starshipeleven]

Anything that needs a source of random I guess

NO DUH!!!

I meant things where having TRUE RNG and not pseudorandom would make a difference. USB ports are cheap nowadays, but...

[bug77]

NO DUH!!!

I meant things where having TRUE RNG and not pseudorandom would make a difference. USB ports are cheap nowadays, but...

I imagine if you wanted to create some statistics by generating random numbers, this little thing would come in handy. But yes, current pseudo-random numbers are already fine for many purposes.

[starshipeleven]

I imagine if you wanted to create some statistics by generating random numbers, this little thing would come in handy. But yes, current pseudo-random numbers are already fine for many purposes.

Yeah, only thing I can think of is crypto because moar security and gambling games (mostly for lulz).

[Adarion]

I wonder when this will be available and how easy integreation in a system would be. And if they can also be built at home (I guess not with all the SMD chips) - sending this over any frontier might compromise the device.

[starshipeleven]

I wonder when this will be available and how easy integreation in a system would be.

afaik there is a single pool of pseudo-random entropy all programs pull numbers from, it should be relatively easy to have this thing feed the pool with high-quality random numbers to use.

And if they can also be built at home (I guess not with all the SMD chips) - sending this over any frontier might compromise the device.

There is so much random tiny stuff from china pushing through any frontier that finding this specific object would be nearly impossible without some insider info.

Anyway, the controller's firmware source and circuit schematics are also given. The irregular positions of the SMDs on that board in the image http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/v1.0/chaoskey-bare.jpg tell me they were hand-soldered, since SMDs can also be hand-soldered, or hand-placed on a prepared (with paste) board that is then put in a oven that solders them.

Also you can replicate the circuit on a much larger board with much larger components if you so wish, it will work the same even if it isn't made with SMDs.

[callegar]

As a matter of fact, an USB equipped TRNG can be obtained from hardware that is already on sale in large numbers at less than 10$, no need to design a special PCB or to solder anything. A Cypress PSOC 5LP already contains everything that is needed to design a /True/ Random Number Generator based on chaotic dynamics with USB output. The CY8CKIT-059 prototyping kit, that costs about $9 contains two PSOC 5LP microcontrollers and can be turned into a USB True Random Number Generator dongle by merely uploading an appropriate firmware on it. This was presented at the IEEE ISCAS 2016 conference as the paper "True Random Number Generators as Configware for Mixed Mode Programmable Systems on Chip" and provides over 300kbit/s of entropy. Full disclosure: I am the author. As soon as the paper is given a DOI and it is possible to do so, a sample firmware will be available.