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

[lists@m8y.org]

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On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Ed W wrote:

> OK, so to conclude the previous thread - I bought an entropy key from the 
> nice folks at Simtec via http://entropykey.co.uk
>
> Short version is you plug it in, install the ekeyd package and even on a 
> hardened installation the entropy pool never deviates from full up...
>
> Now, at £30 it seems like a bargain for a fancy random number generator, but 
> then I read that the daemon can be switched to pipe the data out in "egd" 
> format and essentially you can have one machine supply high volumes of random 
> numbers for a fair number of networked clients.  In my case this solves the 
> problem of how to pipe entropy to some cheap rented servers where we don't 
> get to touch the physical hardware...  Very nice
>
> I have no relationship with the entropy-key guys other than being a happy 
> customer.  They seem like a small shop and I think they deserve a plug (and 
> really need to work on their presence via google... Searches on this stuff 
> only turn up $400 alternatives... Sheesh)

I'm a bit puzzled how that offers much security.
Is the advantage that the algorithm for PRNG has to be extracted from the chip inside the key before it can be abused?

Seems no better than, say:
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/56

Apart from at least adding a bit more layers in the algorithm.