At 07:12 AM 8/4/2006, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann wrote:
On Aug 3, 2006, at 9:21 PM, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Windows sucks. (but you knew that already) It has no /dev/random or /dev/urandom, and I'm faced with a need to collect some good-quality entropy for a crypto app. Adding to the merriment, the systems involved will be semi-headless and are unlikely to have a hardware RNG. (e.g. though they may have rodentia and keyboards, neither is likely to be in use, and I can't require a HWRNG) All the entropy collectors I've seen mentioned for Windows (and there aren't many... EGADS seems to be the leading contender) use keyboard timing and mouse position as primary sources.
Lots of motherboards have audio on them, so depending on what you mean by "semi-headless" that may be a noise source. Add a microphone and overdrive it...