codeblog code is freedom — patching my itch

October 30, 2008

how to drain your entropy and have fun with ssh fingerprint ASCII-art

Filed under: Blogging,Debian,General,Ubuntu,Ubuntu-Server — kees @ 10:48 am

SSH’s new “VisualHostKey” option (in Ubuntu Intrepid and Debian Lenny) is great fun. Normally it is disabled, but it seems that “ssh-keygen” turns it on when generating new keys. In celebration of the Ubuntu release, here is a script to entertain yourself with RSA ASCII-art, care of SSH and your system’s entropy pool:


#!/bin/sh
set -e
DIR=$(mktemp -t -d rsa-art-XXXXXX)
trap "rm -f $DIR/key*; rmdir $DIR" EXIT HUP INT QUIT TERM

while :
do
    ART=$(ssh-keygen -t rsa -f $DIR/key -N "" | tail -n 11)
    rm -f $DIR/key
    /bin/echo -e "\x1Bc"
    echo "$ART"
done

Makes me feel like I’m watching Life. (Use control-C to stop it.)

© 2008, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
CC BY-SA 4.0

2 Comments

  1. Doing this may lead you to run out of entropy, but you may use rng-tools, as explained on this page ( http://www.wzdftpd.net/blog/index.php?2008/06/16/24-linux-kernel-and-entropy ), written by a friend.

    Testing on my server showed me some improvement, ( ie more fps ), but it was not as fast as I would have hoped.

    Comment by Misc — October 30, 2008 @ 11:27 am

  2. Hehhehehehe that’s coool. A complete waste of time ;)

    Comment by Jimmy Montano — October 30, 2008 @ 2:36 pm

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