X Developer Keith Packard's ChaosKey Hardware RNG Is Almost Here

Veteran X.Org/X developer Keith Packard along with well known open-source advocate Bdale Garbee have been working on an "inexpensive yet robust" USB-based hardware random number generator.

After years of work on this USB hardware RNG, they finally have a device they are taking into production: ChaosKey v1.0. There's already the mainline ChaosKey driver for supporting this true random number generator and the device itself is also open-source. ChaosKey 1.0 was presented at this week's DebConf16 Debian conference in Cape Town.

The ChaosKey is hosted under Altus Metrum, the side-business of Keith and Bdale focused on model rockets. ChaosKey 1.0 is currently going through a production run of 1000 units and they expect them to arrive sometime next month. The device is powered by a STM32F042 SoC with ARM Cortex-M0, 32k flash, 6k RAM, and USB 2.0 connection. There's a 20V noise source and OPA356 op amp. The firmware, flash loader, and utility are all open-source along with the hardware design files being public too.

If you are interested in learning more about the current state of ChaosKey 1.0, see the project site or for this week's talk about it watch the DebConf 16 videos.