[Whonix-devel] Entropy Daemon Questions

Fri Jan 31 21:50:34 CET 2020

Hi. Whonix privacy distro dev here. We are thinking about packaging and
deploying your entropy daemons so I had a few questions about thow they
work.

* How does timer_entropyd design/entropy sources differ to Jitterentropy
[1] and haveged [2]?
[1] https://www.chronox.de/jent/doc/CPU-Jitter-NPTRNG.html
[2] https://issihosts.com/haveged/

* Assuming they all use the same source but implement unique algos to
inject randomness, would they objectively add any more entropy or have
an advantage as opposed to using a differing input type?

* I recently talked with the author of 'randomsound', a soundcard
entropy daemon that uses mic input. He was very skeptical [3] of the
advantages it offers on modern soundcards because of filtering. How does
audio_entropyd design differ and does it get around the pitfalls
mentioned in his reply?

[3] https://www.whonix.org/pipermail/whonix-devel/2019-November/001479.html

* Does the problems mentioned in the randomsound thread impact
video_entropyd in any way?

* What entropy tests can I run to see how much randomness is being
gathered by each source?

TIA