hardware crypto and SSL?

[Eric Anderson]

Michael Sierchio wrote:

> Eric Anderson wrote:
>
>> The new VIA Eden-N processors have built in high-speed AES encryption 
>
>
> Forgive me, but that's really not important -- for SSL the bulk
> encryption algorithm is usually RC4 (oops, ARCFOUR ;-), which
> is efficient in software .  It's the handshake and public key
> operations that really benefit from the use of HW crypto. 

I understand - justing tossing it into the ring..

> In which case the currently-supported cards (either by the
> OpenBSD /dev/crypto scheme ported by Sam Leffler, or those
> directly supported in the OpenSSL engine) all work fine.
>
> IOW the current Soekris boards help quite a bit, and they
> also help because they have a HW RBG which actually stirs
> the entropy pool for /dev/random -- very helpful for not
> running out of random bits on machines that have no
> keyboard or mouse. 

FWIW, the Eden processors also have a high-speed, high-quality hardware 
RNG built into them too (of course).  Again, just tossing that in. :)  
The Soekris boxes are great - I have about 70 of them in use now.  
Actually, I beleive they were trying to get an Eden processor on one of 
their upcoming models - but I'm not certain about that. 

Eric



-- 
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Eric Anderson	   Systems Administrator      Centaur Technology
All generalizations are false, including this one.
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