VIA C3 Random Number Generator Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "VIA has added a hardware random number generator to its Nehemiah C3 CPU. I found a recent review of its security. Interesting how it's done at the instruction level as opposed to the chipset level used by the i810 RNG (also reviewed there)."

Comments

Re:Cant the randomness be predicted?

[jmv]

No. Generally the idea of devices is just to amplify thermal noise. Thermal noise is produced at the microscopic level with atoms bouncing into each other. There's no way to predict that... unless you tap directly into the generator (in which case it's simpler to just get the data on the computer before it's encrypted).