On 10/18/05, Jack Lloyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Peter Gutmann has several good papers on RNG design, as have some folks > currently or formerly associated with Counterpane (ie Wagner, Kelsey, Hall, > ...). It is worth reading their analysis papers as well as their design > papers, > especially the ones that cover fielded PRNG designs.
It's interesting that you mention that, because that counterpane paper, http://www.schneier.com/paper-prngs.html points out several flaws in the ANSI X9.17 PRNG. > mentioned, "oversampling won't help you generate random bits any faster; you > will get more bits but no more randomness." Yeah... in most cases you'll get serial-correlated (autocorrelated) bits, and then if you're using a von Neumann corrector, you'll get bias, and if you have bias you'll be unhappy, and if you're unhappy you'll sleep a lot, and we can't be having that. > However, I don't see how you are protecting the confidentiality of the data at > all in your current design. Well, you transmit the data, and then it gets encrypted with a random key before it is used... effectively this is a one-way function, so you'd have to mount a search on the key used if you want to be able to interpret how the network traffic is used downstream. Of course you'd want a cipher such that encryption with a random key doesn't introduce any bias. -- http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/ -><- "We already have enough fast, insecure systems." -- Schneier & Ferguson GPG fingerprint: 50A1 15C5 A9DE 23B9 ED98 C93E 38E9 204A 94C2 641B --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
