Wed, 27 Aug 2014 08:34:03 -0700
altusmetrum, debconf, debian, security

USB TRNG

Yesterday I had a blast presenting my talk Security not by chance: the AltusMetrum hardware true random number generator at DebConf14.

USB TRNG is a collaborative effort with AltusMetrum to create a completely open hardware and Free software true random number generator.

In my talk I mention the rationale for gathering more entropy: The Linux urandom boot-time entropy hole as described in the paper Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices.

I also mention some of the difficulty in assessing RNG quality for security applications as highlighted by Matthew Green in his blog post How do you know if an RNG is working?.

I've been lucky to work on this design with Bdale Garbee and Keith Packard.

If you'd like to learn more you can...

Download the presentation (see below)

Check out the web page for USB TRNG

Join us on IRC OFTC #altusmetrum

Join the trng mailing list

Let me know if you'd like to get involved!

links

Presentation as PDF: usbtrng.pdf

Presentation video: Soon to be uploaded by the amazing Debian Video Team.