[Cryptography] TRNGs as open source design semiconductors

Ken McCall kenmccall at protonmail.com
Wed Sep 11 12:45:52 EDT 2019


I watch discussions on this list to learn more about cryptography and I find it very valuable. However, I am not a cryptographer myself. There was recent thread on TRNGs and I'd like to expound it into a slightly different tangent, if I may.

It seems to me (at least in the cryptocurrency world) that there is a growing desire that hardware become more transparent (as in open source) just as software has been. I believe an open source chip could radically disrupt the existing TRNG chip market, forcing transparency. I’m also assuming this theoretical chip would  be certified by one or more of the myriad certification authorities that all these manufacturers use as proof of their design integrity. Obviously there is a case to be made that a TRNG burned into a chip (and open source hardware design) results in a fixed attack surface. However, at least that attack surface, should it be breached, would be a known entity versus the proprietary chips on the market.

To my knowledge there are no open source TRNG chips commercially available on the market. There are however, discrete component plans available, but not widely adopted (http://www.bitbabbler.org/).

Also, there was one Crowdsupply failed attempt to create a chip:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v/updates/open-true-random-number-generator

So, I wonder:

- Might open source TRNG hardware (as a semiconductor chip) better support cryptography in general, or perhaps just for crypto currencies? Or, am I completely wrong in this belief, and the hardware designs are best left as proprietary?

Thanks you for your thoughts on this.

Ken
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