[Cryptography] cheap sources of entropy

[James A. Donald]

On 2014-02-02 21:40, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> There's no point in discussing this any further:  Those who say "not so" would (a) have a great deal of difficulty proving a negative; (b) have little interest in (in our opinion) wasting our time looking for something that isn't there.  So it's on you:  If you feel such variations will survive - prove it!

The only thing that could eliminate such variations is a process switch 
on a low frequency timer, rather than the availability of data.  All the 
other added complications, all the layers, all the virtualization, other 
than switch on a low frequency time, will merely add more random 
variation, rather than subtract existing variation

Now, if at any stage in the process, there was switching on a low 
frequency time, it would show up, in that timing values on disk limited 
processes would be exact multiples of that timer.

Which they are not.



>    The techniques were published years ago, and are not particularly difficult or complex.  A VM to which you have root access, and virtual disks of different apparent sizes and speeds, are readily available for minimal cost from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and many others.  Have at it!
>
>                                                          -- Jerry
>
>