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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:05
Bill Frantz (frantz@netcom.com)
Mon, 25 Jan 1999 21:48:21 -0700
At 8:38 AM -0700 1/26/99, Peter Gutmann wrote:
...long description of the evils of the NT API deleted...
>Does anyone know of any alternative entropy sources under NT apart from the
>relatively lightweight ones I already use (thread times, window positions,
>that
>sort of thing)?
If you can get any kind of event (disk I/O, network packet, keyboard,
mouse, etc.), the cpu cycle counter seems like it is a good source. I
found that there seemed to be some entropy in the jitter of the cpu cycle
counter as measured by pacing the ticks of the real time clock. (Read the
real time clock until it changes and then sample the cycle counter.) At
least the output passed FIPS-140 without any whitening.
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Bill Frantz | Macintosh: Didn't do every-| Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | thing right, but did know | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com | the century would end. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:05