Omer Zak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Geiger counters coupled to slightly sub-critical lumps of enriched > uranium can be tuned to provide arbitrarily large amounts of > entropy.
Certainly you don't need enriched uranium for that. Which also means that such a device can be attached to every server without any risk to personnel. Very random (and safe) radioactive sources are often used in labs at universities and schools, in conjunction with Geiger counters. Very useful for studying Poisson distributions... yes, I know you've been kidding... ;-) Now, back on topic: imagine a server that *only* has the following I/O: network, iSCSI disk (over the same network), and console over serial over the same network. There simply won't be any other source of entropy *but* the network. On the other hand, the consideration that the network can be affected by outside parties to reduce entropy to dangerous levels is sound. So, it seems that an internal source of entropy, either radioactive (but watch for possible bit flipping!) or something like Quantis (that Amos mentioned) are necessary in such cases. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
