Re: [gentoo-hardened] Bought an "entropy-key" - very happy

[Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com>]

On 25/03/2010 17:50, pageexec@freemail.hu wrote:
> On 25 Mar 2010 at 13:10, Rob Kendrick wrote:
>
>    
>> it goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure the entropy that is
>> injected into your pool can't be sniffed before it gets there,
>>      
> out of curiosity, what's that mean exactly?
>
>    

I believe that the random numbers are encrypted out of the device?  I 
say that because when you start up the userspace daemon you tell it a 
long random number supplied with the device.  I assume this is designed 
to make sure that some local process can't sniff the entropy (over the 
USB bus, or whatever) before it's added to the kernel pool?

Although this seems like a basic feature for an entropy source, it 
wasn't particularly a feature I was looking for.  From my point of view 
it just seemed like a cheap plentiful entropy source which works pretty 
much out of the box just by plugging in...

Cheers

Ed W