Intel 810 Random Number Generator

[Steve Underwood]

Jeff Garzik wrote:

> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > Thats beyond paranoia.
> > The source mentions a malicious attacker, but if such an attacker has
> > control of the thermal generator in your system you have bigger problems.
>
> ;-)   As I said it comes down to whether you trust Intel or not.

Its really a matter of whether you trust Intel _and_ the motherboard maker.
This is a high performance digital chip, producing a huge amount of digital
noise. I would be amazed if Intel had truly eliminated that digital noise
(which is highly structured) from the thermal noise sensing process. I would
be even more amazed if the quality of the results is consistent between
motherboards. Even if the RNG in the 810 is found to be generally not too bad,
you would still need to test every motherboard for consistency. Even for
multiple motherboards of the same design, there exists the possibility of a
fault decoupling capacitor not disrupting the normal operation of the board,
but raising the digital noise level within the 810.

Steve



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