[onerng talk] Putting Inf Noise on Tindie in non-competitive way?

[ianG]

>> One question:  how does it look to software?  I'm not in a position to
>> do any device driver writing, or mucking around with Linux kernels...
>> I'm using MacOSX and writing from Java so I essentially want either a
>> tty or a file device surfaced so I can read the thing directly from
>> userland.
...

> It uses a common USB chip (FTDI FT240X), so the driver is already available
> for Mac OS-X.


I think it is essential for these devices to pop up and be available
without fuss.  In essence this means that if it emulates other standard
devices, then it wins.


> You just run a user-space C program I wrote to access it,
> since the open-source libftdi has a C API.

OK, will read.  Are you saying I need to get that installed?  If it has
to be a user-installed device driver, I think you'll find a bit of a
drag in the market place.  But let's see how robust this is first.


> From Java, I would just launch
> it with stdio communication, which I've found to be reliable.

Does it surface a device file in /dev?  If I can find the file, I can
handle the rest.  Or are you saying that the user-space C program has to
be run to get access in a program because the driver doesn't have ioctls
and so forth?


> You control
> whether I turn the Keccak whitener on with command a line parameter.  It
> just spits binary data at you over stdout and blocks until you read it.
> stderr is used for debug and error reporting.


OK.  Have you had a go at measuring the results through 'ent' so we can
compare to Paul's results?  I don't think this is a big deal but the
market is oriented to numbers [1], so they will expect to be able to
compare them and wax pontifical.  E.g., RSA 1024 is clearly twice as
strong as EC 512...


> I just got three boards from OSH Park that fit into the USB key housing.
> If you don't mind, I'll mail you a new one as soon as I assemble it.  I
> think I'll let you snap the USB housing in place, so it will come in three
> pieces: board, top shell, and bottom shell.

Nice!

iang



[1] Peter and I wrote a light hearted poke at this here:
The Curse of Cryptographic Numerology
http://iang.org/ssl/grigg-gutmann-cryptographic-numerology.pdf