From: Jukka E Isosaari <jei@zor.hut.fi>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 10:59:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks-unedited@toad.com
Subject: Re: Randomness testing
In-Reply-To: <m0zOxtY-0001eoC@magpie.osa.com.au>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.981002183806.14656Z-100000@zor.hut.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



One very easy test is to compress the produced random number binary files
with various compression algorithms or programs. If the data is truly 
random, it should not be possible to achieve any compression. At least
not if you include the compression program data size in the calculation.

Well, I'm not sure whether this is such a good practical test or not.(?)

++ J

On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Clifford Heath wrote:

> We have been asked by a customer if we have any tests that demonstrate 
> the randomness of the SSLeay random number generator (augmented by some
> sound-card random number seeding that we wrote).
> 
> I'd like to find some standard implementation for testing randomness, but 
> Schneier offers no help (other than a reference to Knuth Vol 2), and I
> don't know where else to turn.
> 
> I realise that cryptographic randomness requires unpredictability, and
> this quality depends upon closed-world assumptions about unknown individuals'
> predictive powers, but we have to live with that.
> 
> -- 
> Clifford Heath                    http://www.osa.com.au/~cjh
> Open Software Associates Limited       mailto:cjh@osa.com.au
> 29 Ringwood Street / PO Box 4414       Phone  +613 9871 1694
> Ringwood VIC 3134      AUSTRALIA       Fax    +613 9871 1711
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Deploy Applications across the net, see http://www.osa.com
> 
>