The sys admin’s daily grind: haveged Random Release
Random Release
Practical cryptography is often an encounter with many random numbers in just a few moments. Entropy is the raw material that gives birth to the random number, but it’s harder to come by than you might think.
Creating havoc with a computer is an easy thing to do, but today, I need a more ordered kind of chaos: entropy. I need to generate high-quality random numbers with minimal predictability. Anybody who plumbs the depths of cryptographic functions will need a good and fast entropy generator at some time, say, to make sure that keys really are generated from genuinely random data, rather than predictable numbers.
You need to be creative to achieve high-quality entropy. Creative people have invented methods for generating random numbers from the bubbles in a lava lamp, the noise generated by feedback from a microphone input, and the luminance values of a camera sensor in a closed black box. All of these work really well, but they’re slow.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
News
-
GitHub Announces Open Source Friday Program
They encourage people to take time out and work on open source projects on Friday.
-
System76 Announces Their Own Distro, Pop!_OS
Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu and uses the Gnome stack.
-
Linus Torvalds Talks About His Motivation
He never tires of working on the Linux kernel.
-
Debian 9 Stretches Its Wings
The new release of Debian has a very strong focus on security.
-
Trojan Turns Raspberry Pi into a Cryptocurrency Mining Device
Two trojans in the wild are targeting Linux machines.
-
Fedora 26 Beta Comes with New Features
The workstation comes with the latest Gnome desktop environment and support for many application build systems.
-
Raspberry Pi Foundation Merges with CoderDojo Foundation
The two foundations join forces to expand their efforts to reach young people.
-
Samba Security Hole Patched but Risk is Bigger
Millions of devices that use Samba Server are vulnerable to attacks.
-
Red Hat Announces OpenShift.io
Red Hat takes its IDE online.
-
Microsoft Bakes Linux into Windows Server
Microsoft is slowly becoming a Linux vendor.