[Cryptography] RNG exploits are stealthy

[Peter Gutmann]

Philipp =?iso-8859-1?Q?G=FChring?= <pg at futureware.at> writes:

>So in the name of battery saving, some people actually developed interrupt
>rigidizing beasts:

This may be news for Android devices, but interrupt (and timer) coalescing has
been done for several decades in general-purpose computers, originally because
CPUs weren't powerful enough to handle a high interrupt load, and then more
recently for power-saving purposes.  For example Windows has had timer and
interrupt coalescing for some years now, see e.g:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463269.aspx

The effects have also been heavily studied, mostly in terms of performance
impact, see e.g. "Estimating the Impact of Interrupt Co alescing Delays on
Steady State TCP Throughput" by Zec et al from SoftCom 2002:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.1097&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Peter.