1995-09-21 - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape

Header Data

From: Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com>
To: karlton@netscape.com
Message Hash: 11e2c8d4083b1ece8460a88b583f3b6c3aa3e2d532ebef51cb6c333fa72d851e
Message ID: <199509212245.PAA15299@comsec.com>
Reply To: <43psn2$6ug@tera.mcom.com>
UTC Datetime: 1995-09-21 23:02:11 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 21 Sep 95 16:02:11 PDT

Raw message

From: Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 95 16:02:11 PDT
To: karlton@netscape.com
Subject: Re: "random" number seeds vs. Netscape
In-Reply-To: <43psn2$6ug@tera.mcom.com>
Message-ID: <199509212245.PAA15299@comsec.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> What I would like:
> 
>     Any OS has access to a number of real-world physical sources of
>     randomness. This information is not made available to a user level
>     process. How long did that last seek take? Was there any noise on
>     the microphone? It would be good if the OS could gather that
>     information and make some set of bits available to any process that
>     asks. Having this be part of all OSes would make my job easier.

We've got a *real* hardware random number generator that was developed
for our secure phones.  If you are seriously interested, we can
glue the RNG onto the end of a serial port for you.  It generates
about 8000 bits of uncorrelated noise / second.

Eric Blossom
COMSEC Partners
707-577-0409

Thread

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• 1995-09-20 (Wed, 20 Sep 95 13:15:25 PDT) - “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - karlton@netscape.com (Phil Karlton)
  • 1995-09-20 (Wed, 20 Sep 95 14:02:02 PDT) - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@piermont.com>
    • 1995-09-20 (Wed, 20 Sep 95 15:28:22 PDT) - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - Phil Karlton <karlton@netscape.com>
      • 1995-09-20 (Wed, 20 Sep 95 15:41:55 PDT) - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@piermont.com>
      • 1995-09-22 (Fri, 22 Sep 95 03:43:58 PDT) - RNG Resource FAQ (was Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape) - futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)
  • 1995-09-20 (Wed, 20 Sep 95 14:26:10 PDT) - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - sameer <sameer@c2.org>
  • 1995-09-21 (Thu, 21 Sep 95 16:02:11 PDT) - Re: “random” number seeds vs. Netscape - Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com>