Edit: I found it for $36 elsewhere. :D

  • chickentendrils@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Yeah, not USB but in principle it’s the same whether it’s PCI or whatever. There’s no way to prove an RNG is truly random really just have to rely on validating subsets of its output look random. NIST has published recommendations for sampling RNGs.

    Here’s the title:

    A Statistical Test Suite for Random and Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications

    I don’t think there’s a real need unless it’s regulated to need some dedicated HW RNG.

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 days ago

      Very precise answer, thank you.

      How about a simple test to make sure it didn’t break and start spitting out all zeroes. Read a few lines from /dev/random ?

      • piccolo [any]@hexbear.net
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        4 days ago

        I might be wrong about this but my understanding is that on Linux you’d pipe the output of this in somewhere and tell the kernel to use it for entropy, and if it gets insufficient entropy it realizes this and starts producing random bits slower. So like normally the Linux kernel samples mouse movements for randomness, and so it makes more random bits the more you jiggle your mouse. These hardware RNGs are best used for headless servers that don’t have as reliable entropy at their disposal.

      • chickentendrils@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        Yeah as long as the setup for the device symlinked its device path to /dev/random or you did that yourself. Stuff I used had a Java SDK walter-breakdown