Real randomness generators
Two points: 1 - The noisiest thing on most lists is the noise about other peoples' noise. 2 - Why not use the postings of people complaining about other peoples' posts as a source for noise. Surely few things in the Universe are more random. On the the subject at hand: There are two major technical issues I have encountered in using EM waves (which is what video and radio noise are) for generating randomness. 1 - They tend to be biased toward 1 or 0. This can often be compensated for by (for example) xoring one bit stream from the same source with the inverse of another. By doing this enough times, you can eliminate many of the characteristics of interest. 2 - Noise tends to be characteristic for different media and noise causes. This is a more difficult issue. For example, certain types of media tend toward short noise bursts. In these cases, you have to be quite careful to assure that the bit streams meet the randomness criteria of the application. As a side issue, you may find that once you start sending enough information with truly random characteristics, you will be visited by people that don't want you sending it. I know people who have experienced these visitations and felt highly constrained as a result. -- -> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236
Dr. Fred writes:
As a side issue, you may find that once you start sending enough information with truly random characteristics, you will be visited by people that don't want you sending it. I know people who have experienced these visitations and felt highly constrained as a result.
Could you possibly elaborate on this ? Was this overseas where the NSA might be presumed to be involved or domesticaly ? (And of course was it in the USA or elsewhere ?)
Dave Emery die@die.com
On Fri, 3 Nov 1995, Dr. Frederick B. Cohen wrote:
As a side issue, you may find that once you start sending enough information with truly random characteristics, you will be visited by people that don't want you sending it. I know people who have experienced these visitations and felt highly constrained as a result.
C. J. Leonard ( / "DNA is groovy" \ / - Watson & Crick <cjl@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu> / \ <-- major groove ( \ Finger for public key \ ) Strong-arm for secret key / <-- minor groove Thumb-screws for pass-phrase / )
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