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???
04/10/11 09:35
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#181797 - understanding
Responding to: ???'s previous message
Per Westermark said:
Note that you don't need every byte of the SRAM to be a good source of randomness.

I am aware of that.

However, the question then is, whether you (or they) know, how "good" that randomness is, i.e. what is the percentage of the "unbiased" SRAM cells in your particular array, how well "unbiased" they are, and what are all the potential factors influencing this.

Also, too many applications in this field play on the appearance of randomness. If you take say any well-known poem, say a thousand of letters (which in itself are undoubtedly not very well random), subject it some sort of encryption, the result may be a thousand of bytes appearing completely random even when subjected to "industry grade" tests of randomness (they would probably fail tests invented by cryptographers like Marsaglia's "Diehard" suite, but it again takes a great deal of understanding to be able to properly interpret the results of those, which makes them practially unusable for various regulatory and testing agencies). Yet the true randomness in them is maybe half an order of magnitude less (given to limited character set and limited ways of grouping of letters); and if the "opponent" knows your "method" (i.e. that you've chosen a literary work as the "seed"), then even much less.

The key word here is "understanding", which cannot be simplified to a mere application of a set of formulae.

JW


List of 15 messages in thread
TopicAuthorDate
Truly Random Number Generator            01/01/70 00:00      
   Latency Time Problem            01/01/70 00:00      
   this is bad            01/01/70 00:00      
      Don't think 1:1 mapping            01/01/70 00:00      
         understanding            01/01/70 00:00      
            Doesn't matter            01/01/70 00:00      
   Yeah, yeah!!            01/01/70 00:00      
      Way more than 3            01/01/70 00:00      
      baloney            01/01/70 00:00      
         So easy to make assumptions and crash and burn            01/01/70 00:00      
      Missing the point!            01/01/70 00:00      
   Its just soooo wrong            01/01/70 00:00      
      Randomness - NOT            01/01/70 00:00      
         The key point is            01/01/70 00:00      
            Johnson noise versus zener noise...            01/01/70 00:00      

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