Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 1 Jun 1999 16:00:53 -0700 (PDT) | From | David Whysong <> | Subject | Re: /dev/random and /dev/psaux: too much entropy assumed? |
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On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>and, btw, I stand by my assertion that statistical uniformity doesn't >matter for /dev/random. The uses the kernel has for random numbers >require unguessability, and /dev/random supplies this. If you need some >other property in user-space, it is *your* responsibility to verify that >/dev/random supplies this, not the kernel's. Repeatability, for example, >is often considered a virtue for simulation uses. The kernel doesn't >supply a *repeatable* random number stream, nor should it ever be required >to. > --s
I have to disagree strongly...
A stream of n bits from /dev/random should not be repeatable with any frequency greater than 1 in 2^n, but it definately should be uniformly distributed. Otherwise the numbers aren't really random, and therefore they aren't useful for any purpose I can think of -- certainly not monte carlo integration or anything else that uses "random" numbers, and not for cryptographic applications.
Dave
David Whysong dwhysong@physics.ucsb.edu Astrophysics graduate student University of California, Santa Barbara My public PGP keys are on my web page - http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~dwhysong DSS PGP Key 0x903F5BD6 : FE78 91FE 4508 106F 7C88 1706 B792 6995 903F 5BD6 D-H PGP key 0x5DAB0F91 : BC33 0F36 FCCD E72C 441F 663A 72ED 7FB7 5DAB 0F91
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