Curious RNG stalemate [was: use of cpunks]

[Andrea Shepard]

On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 02:39:01PM -0700, Jon Callas wrote:
> It is certainly true that radioactivity is a random effect, and is quantum
> in nature. That does not mean that in order for a random sampling to be
> quantum, it must be based on radioactivity; there are other quantum sources
> of randomness. Noisy diodes, resister noise, CCD noise, etc. are all quantum.
> If you want to get picky, *all* physical effects are quantum, even ones that
> aren't usefully random. There is nothing magic about one physical source or
> other that makes it more suited for crypto. Thinking that a hardware source
> should be radioactive is affirming the consequence, as well.

Radioactivity is almost uniquely insensitive to tampering through environmental
influences, though, owing to the large energy scale of nuclear processes [1].

Unfortunately, it does not automatically follow that the circuit used to
detect it is also similarly robust, and NSA would probably be able to
easily develop the capability to eavesdrop on Geiger-counter based RNGs
if they become widespread.  A high DC voltage, and abrupt current pulses -
this is sounding rather similar to a spark-gap transmitter.

[1] A handful of exceptions exist involving low-energy beta decays, such as
Dy-163 and Re-187.

-- 
Andrea Shepard
<andrea at persephoneslair.org>
PGP fingerprint (ECC): 2D7F 0064 F6B6 7321 0844  A96D E928 4A60 4B20 2EF3
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