On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 04:59:17PM +0300, Marko Asplund wrote:
> has anyone done an analysis of the OpenSSL PRNG which would be available
> for public? i've read the Random Number Generation chapter of Peter
> Gutmann's PhD thesis (The Design and Verification of a Cryptographic
> Security Architecture, http://www.cryptoapps.com/~peter/06_random.pdf)
> which contains an analysis of the design of OpenSSL PRNG but has anyone
> analysed the random numbers generated? does the PRNG contain mechanisms
> for statistically analysing its output? have there been any plans for
> including statistical randomness tests in the PRNG output? do these tests
> like the Maurer's universal statistical test catch PRNG errors in
> practice?
Some of the FIPS 140-1 tests are implemented in randtest.c, but
statistical tests on PRNG output are not really meaningful. If a PRNG
fails them, this surely is a bad sign, but it is easy to implement a
bad "PRNG" that passes all the tests. Hash function output looks
pretty random, but usually isn't. Such tests are meaningful for
hardware implementations where you might have issues such as defective
wires (e.g. every byte is of the form rrrrr0rr -- seven random bits,
but one fixed bit).
For a concise description of a problem with earlier versions of the
OpenSSL PRNG that Peter Gutmann did not notice, see
<URL:http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_prng.txt>.
--
Bodo M�ller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
PGP http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/Mitarbeiter/moeller/0x36d2c658.html
* TU Darmstadt, Theoretische Informatik, Alexanderstr. 10, D-64283 Darmstadt
* Tel. +49-6151-16-6628, Fax +49-6151-16-6036
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