True hardware random number generator with the Raspberry PI

So, I have been getting into cryptology lately, (For my most recent projects that I may or may not have blogged about at this point, see Bloom Filter and RC4Ever on GitHub).

The other day, I had a need for a TRUE random number generator, so I was searching the web for a hardware random number generator, when I found some very pleasant information: I already own one!

As it turns out, the Raspberry Pi (A/A+/B/B+/and 2) includes a hardware based random number generator, and according to many sources, its a very good source of truly random bytes. Yay!


To get this working on your own Pi, its a breeze:
1) Install the RasPi's random number generator tools: sudo apt-get install rng-tools.
2) Add to the boot process file (/etc/modules.conf) the command to run the hwrng module: bcm2708-rng.
3) Reboot the Pi.

Now, /dev/hwrng is available for reading. Its treated like a device, and you can use the dd command to copy bytes from the device stream to a file (like examples you might have seen doing the same from /dev/random).

NOTE: /dev/hwrng is accessible by the user root only.

But we can change that! The following command gives the user level read access: sudo chmod a+r /dev/hwrng

NOTE: This setting gets reset upon every reboot.

Again, we can change that: Add the following line to /etc/rc.local file, just above the exit 0 line:
chmod a+r /dev/hwrng

And its just that easy!

Now, say if you want to generate 1 megabyte worth of random bytes to a file in /tmp, simply enter the following command into a terminal:
dd if=/dev/hwrng of=hwrng-test-data.bin bs=1024 count=1024

The bs argument specifies the size to buffer before writing to disk. You probably want to leave that at or around 1024. Its the count argument that specifies the size, or amount, of data you want to copy from /dev/hwrng, in Kilobytes. So 1024 == 1 MB, where as 1 == 1KB.

Now, its time for Step 4) Create a C# helper library to simplify the retrieval of random bytes from /dev/hwrng.


So there is two ways to approach this. One is to make a C++ library that makes native calls and then write a .NET interop library to wrap that Or, if you are like me, a little lazy, and find that ever since transitioning to C# you find it difficult to write anything in C or C++ that compiles, you may opt to just issue the above commands to the shell and just read in the resulting file from the tmp directory.

As hackey as this second option might seem, it works remarkably well and I have written a GitHub project doing just that. It consists of a library to return random bytes, and a console executable exercising said library to get random bytes. Links below!


- The PiRngWrapper GitHub Project
- The PiRngWrapperLibrary.cs wrapper code file

Threaded Equation Finder

Threaded Equation Finder

Find arithmetic equations that equates to a given 'target' value, number of terms, and operators.

View the GitHub - Download source .zip

Introduction

   You should all be familiar with how a typical computer works; you give it some variables, describe some quantities of some resources you have, choose an algorithm, let it process, and it returns to you a result or outcome. Now imagine a computer if you could work with a computer that worked the other way around. I believe it was Douglas Adams that described the notion of an all-together different type of computer; That is, you tell the computer what you want the outcome to be, and it goes off figuring out how to get there and what you need to do it. Z3, the Theorem Prover, and the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) solver (and probably others) in Microsoft's Solver Foundation do almost exactly that.
   There is also the idea of Backcasting, which is a similar, but different idea.

   My program isn't as fancy as all that, but it does find equations that equates to a given 'target' value, albeit at random. You define constraints other than just the target value, such as what operators are allowed in the equation, the quantity of terms there, and the range or set of allowed terms.
For example, how many different ways can 9 nines equal 27, using only addition, subtraction, and multiplication, if evaluated left-to-right (ignore the order of operations)? Turns out there are only 67 ways.

(above) Application Screen Shot

How it works

   The actual approach for finding equations that equate to an arbitrary target or 'goal' value is rather primitive. By way of Brute Force, several threads are launched asynchronously to generate thousands of random equations, evaluate them and keep the results that have not been found yet.

   This is something I wrote approx. 2 years ago. I dug it up and decided to publish it, because I thought it was interesting. As this was an 'experiment', I created different ways of storing and evaluating the expressions, and have made those different 'strategies' conform to a common interface so I could easily swap them out to compare the different strategies. I have refactored the code so that each class that implements IEquation is in its own project and creates its own assembly.

   There are two fully-working strategies for representing equations: one that represented the equation as a list of 2-tuples (Term,Operator), did not perform order of operations, and was rather obtuse. The other strategy was to store the equation as a string and evaluate it using MSScriptControl.ScriptControl to Eval the string as a line of VBScript. This was unsurprisingly slower but allowed for much more robust equation evaluation. Order of operations is respected with the ScriptControl strategy, and opens the way to using using parenthesis.

   The other idea for a strategy which I have not implemented but would like to, would be a left-recursive Linq.Expression builder. Also, maybe I could somehow use Microsoft Solver Foundation for a wiser equation generation strategy than at random.

Limitations

   Today, however, there are better architectures. A concurrent system like this would benefit greatly from the Actor model. If you wanted to write complex queries against the stream of equations being generated or selected or solved, maybe reactive extensions would be a slam dunk.

   Although this project certainly is no Z3, it does provide an example of an interface... perhaps even a good one.

Running on Raspberry Pi 2

   Microsoft's Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) might be a good thing here, but I also wrote a console client that is designed to be ran with Mono on the Raspberry Pi 2. MEF is a proprietary Microsoft .NET technology that is not supported in Mono. The extra meta data in the assembly shouldn't be a problem, but having a dependency on the MEF assembly will be. Probing of the runtime environment and dynamically loading of assemblies is required here, which I have not had time to do, so at this time, there is no MEF.

   The reason the mono client is a console application is because mono and winforms on the Raspberry Pi 2 fails for some people. The problem has something to do with a hardware floating point vs a software float, and it happens to manifest itself when using a TextBox control. The only thing that I haven't tried, and that should presumably fix it, is to re-build mono from the latest source.

Install C# on Raspberry Pi 2 with Mono

Intro

We can run C# on the Raspberry Pi 2! This has made the raspberry pi very valuable in my eyes. You can use Visual Studio to compile a .exe and then RUN IT on The Pi using Mono.

What I liked about The Pi: Getting it working was dead simple. I just formatted an SD card in FAT 32, downloading and extracting a 500mb .zip file and copying the contents of the extracted folder onto the SD card. After you've accomplished that, go take a beer break, you deserved it *whew*.

I was able to just plug in the cables, put in the SD card and I running Linux on The Pi. I was using the HDMI and Ethernet ports, however. If you wish to use the tiny, headphone-jack-looking component video or a USB wireless adapter however, there will be additional steps.

Problems / Gotchas 

Winforms may not play nice with Mono when on the Raspberry pi. Specifically, the problem manifests when you attempt to use a TextBox on your form, but who uses those? This bug  is supposedly fixed in the latest releases, but I have yet to get it to work by just updating my mono. It is very likely that I have to REBUILD mono from the latest source on the pi, which can take several hours. I have not tested this. The bug tracker for this says it has to do with with the pi's 'hard floats', which is referring to hardware floating point calculations.



The hardware is not exactly what I would call stable. Sometimes it does not POST (the BIOS is a binary blob, so does a pi really have a POST?). Anyways, ensure your USB charger that plugs into the wall that can supply plenty of power. The websites say 700ma at a minimum. I find using a 700ma charger is not sufficient. I use a charger that can push 2A, and I dont see many problems.

How does this work? 

A project called Mono. The Mono team has implemented a Common Language Runtime (CLR) that runs in the Linux and Mac environments and is coded to the ECMA-335 Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) AND covers functions and classes in the .NET framework, going all the way to 4.0 with some 4.5! Its open source, of course, and also has a compiler that follows the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification to turn C# code into CLI intermediate code that can be ran in windows as well. Remember, the CLI is just a specification that any language could (theoretically) be compiled to CLI.

Installing Mono C# on Raspberry Pi

This step was pretty straight forward as well. The instructions below are if you installed the NOOBS package which uses Raspian. If you have a different flavor of Linux, the commands below might be different.

You should already have sudo installed on your raspb pi. Prefixing a command with sudo allows you to run processes under a higher privilege without having to log into root. Also if you didnt know, the default username/password to log in the first time is pi/raspberry. If you prefer, you can type 'startx' to bring up the xwindows GUI. The commands below need to be entered into a terminal, which can be brought up within the GUI.

Fist, you want to update your Raspian to the latest version. To do that, you have to have the raspberry pi hooked up the the internet. If you have an ethernet cable and the router uses DHCP, plugging in the ethernet will be sufficient. Then, at the console simply enter the below line into the console:

sudo apt-get update

That may take a few minutes to complete and might prompt you to hit Y/N regarding the size of the package.

sudo apt-get install mono-runtime

This will also will take a few minutes to complete and might prompt you to hit Y/N regarding the size of the package.

After you've accomplished that, go have another beer because that was hard work!




Mono can now be used to run .NET executables:

mono Test.exe

Or, if your program requires elevated rights:

sudo mono Test.exe

Mono also features a REPL (read eval print loop). To access it, type 'csharp'. You can use your favorite text editor to make .cs files and compile them. My recommendation is, of course, to use Microsoft's Visual Studio. You can build and compile an application with MSVS in windows, and just transfer the executable by SCP or thumb-drive to the raspberry pi, which is pretty slick. Hats off to the developer(s) of Mono.