Re: Alpha Particles and One Time Pads

[Peter Shipley <shipley@tfs.COM>]

>Tim May sez:
>	Here's a posting I just sent to sci.crypt, dealing with using alpha
>	particle sources as noise sources for generating one-time pads.
>	
>Tim,
>Why not use a back-biased germanium diode, or other noisy semiconductor
>junction?  Seriously, the NRC has allowed the smoke detector people to
>spread those little radioactive chunks of Americium for too long.
>
>John Walker of AutoDesk actually built an IBM-PC card that generated
>random numbers from a radioactive source.

Q: how hard/cheap will it to build a shielded rs232 plud with a noisy diode
    in it to provide a random number source?


I have written on a possible random number source for Sun SparcStations
(I and II).  I have a program programs the audio chip to take input from
mic port 2 (which is not used in a SparcStation) then I turn up the
gain in the pre-amps and  read the data of the from the DtoA.

I do not know how random it is yet (if anyone wants to run some tests
for me I will be happy to email them the program)


		-Pete