Re: Preliminary results of using GPS to look for clock skew

[Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Rick Jones <rick.jones2@hp.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> One thing that surprised me of late is
>> http://www.bufferbloat.net/issues/271
>>
>> while not related, surprises are the last thing we need as regards to
>> time.
>>
>
> The decision to stop letting networking contribute to entropy goes back a
> few years actually :)

I wasn't paying attention then.

> In another context, also where running-out of entropy was a problem, someone
> mentioned there are RNGs on USB keys that can be used to provide
> randomness/entropy/whatnot.  The one mentioned in that discussion was the
> "Entropy Key" from these folks: http://www.entropykey.co.uk/

While I would like RNGs to be on-chip, the lack of randomness in a system
that supposedly does a lot of WPA encryption does concern me.

https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/9631

Secondly, routers at least have multiple interfaces to get randomness from
which would be hard to spoof all at the same time.

and wireless routers have more noise sources and interfaces...

so while I find the decision to eliminate networking as a source of randomness
makes some sense in a device with only one interface, I find it indefensible to
have nearly no entropy pool at all as a result for devices with
multiple interfaces.


> rick jones
>



-- 
Dave Täht
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