From: d.nix To: cypherpunks@cpunks.org; liberationtech@mailman.stanford.edu Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2013 9:11 AM Subject: Re: USB Block Erupters as RNG sources? > "Very little", and "no". They're basically custom Bitcoin-mining > ASICs, I looked at one a while back for use in password-cracking >> and they're really not suited for it at all, you load a vector in >> and say "go" but since they're quite I/O-limited you can't easily >> adapt them for hash-breaking. As for RNG use, they're entirely >> deterministic, how would you use them as an RNG source? >> at best you *might* be able twist it into a DRBG that would still >> need to be seeded (and regularly reseeded) with robust entropy. >> >> these ASICs really are single purpose; they're useless for anything >> else. >Thanks Peter, Coderman- >Kinda what I suspected seeing as they are *Application Specific* IC's >after all... Wishful thinking more than anything knowing that they are >now saturating their market and loosing value rapidly. >Cheers! >DN This looks like a decent idea for a RNG. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1434841111001713 Another is: [2]http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=847868&url=htt p%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F81%2F18417%2F00847868 Yet another: [3]http://www.fdk.co.jp/cyber-e/pi_ic_rpg100.html Jim Bell References 1. file:///var/lib/mailman/archives/private/cypherpunks/attachments/20131004/3baf84c7/attachment-0001-tmp.html 2. file:///var/lib/mailman/archives/private/cypherpunks/attachments/20131004/3baf84c7/attachment-0001-tmp.html 3. file:///var/lib/mailman/archives/private/cypherpunks/attachments/20131004/3baf84c7/attachment-0001-tmp.html