[talk] Testing Hardware RNG

[Isaac (.ike) Levy]

> On Jan 24, 2025, at 12:07 PM, ori at eigenstate.org wrote:
> 
> Quoth Isaac (.ike) Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net>:
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> Does anyone have any good reccomendations for tools or process testing to find good RNG entropy?  Is Diehard still a thing, (Dieharder?)
>> 
>> Context:
>> I recall quite some years back, folks here testing some hardware RNG's with me.
>> 
>> On a lark, a hardware person I know just whipped up some hardware RNG prototypes, still playing with them, (usb thingies spewing bits).
>> 
>> Anyhow, it's been a while, and I'm interested in testing and test methodology, but can't for the life of me remember how we tested quality of entropy before.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Best,
>> .ike
> 
> Note, while you can prove that a HW RNG isn't totally busted,
> short fo reverse engnieering it with an electron microscope,
> you can't prove it's not backdoored.

Noted!

The thing I find useful about this one, the person making it is just soldering one together with parts they have lying around (on a lark).  Even a knucklehead like me can visually inspect the circuit.
A PIC chip is dumping to serial, perhaps that's the one tricky thing to validate?

I'll let em' finish and get it working before going into that fun :)

Rocket-
.ike