T I R N G

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opinions of Cryptography Research and may or may not reflect opinions of Intel Corporation. … 1999 by Cryptography Research, Inc. and Intel Corporation. …

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THE INTEL?RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR
CRYPTOGRAPHY RESEARCH, INC. WHITE PAPER PREPARED FOR INTEL CORPORATION
Benjamin Jun and Paul Kocher
April 22, 1999
Information in this white paper is provided without guarantee or warranty of any kind. This review represents the
opinions of Cryptography Research and may or may not reflect opinions of Intel Corporation. Characteristics of the
Intel RNG may vary with design or process changes. . 1999 by Cryptography Research, Inc. and Intel Corporation.
1. Introduction
Good cryptography requires good random
numbers. This paper evaluates the hardwarebased
Intel Random Number Generator (RNG)
for use in cryptographic applications.
Almost all cryptographic protocols require
the generation and use of secret values that must
be unknown to attackers. For example, random
number generators are required to generate
public/private keypairs for asymmetric (public
key) algorithms including RSA, DSA, and
Diffie-Hellman. Keys for symmetric and hybrid
cryptosystems are also generated randomly.
RNGs are also used to create challenges, nonces
(salts), padding bytes, and blinding values. The
one time pad - the only provably-secure
encryption system - uses as much key material
as ciphertext and requires that the keystream be
generated from a truly random process.
Because security…