Random Seed for Generating PGP Keys

[NIIBE Yutaka]

On 05/25/2015 08:48 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_hardware_random_number_generators
>> has a list of commercially available generators, and i know i have seen
>> at least 2 homebrew designs that had source and HW schematics released. 
>>
> 
> This article would have been more useful if the author had subjected
> these random number generator to the usual mathematical tests for
> randomness.

Modern RNGs (HWRNG or Pseudo RNG) are (usually) tested heavily by
empirical statistical testing.  Famous free software are:

    TestU01:
    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~simardr/testu01/tu01.html

    PractRand:
    http://pracrand.sourceforge.net/

Well, Dieharder is available in Debian, but it is somewhat older than
those two.


Statistical testing is not sufficient to make sure the random number
sequence is under none's control or none's knowledge.

I believe that free software for the firmware and reproducible
hardware design are also important requirements for HWRNG.


Unfortunately, I banned out from Wikipedia when I added a link to
gniibe.org in the page of HWRNG (the reason was: the link URL included
the string of my login name), so, I cannot edit the page any more.

Lessen was: Wikipedia is(was) not friendly to DIY hardware/software
people to link there useful information.
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