Subject: random number quality revisited

From: Jerry Scharf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 12:22:09 -0700 (PDT)

Curtis,

I realized I left something out and wanted to fix that on the list. A
comment you said didn't quite sink in, and needed a response. As part of
the cylink crypto code that is available to the IETF, it includes a
cryptographic quality random number generator. I am not of the level of
expertise to say how good it is, but it has been certified, and since
we will publish the source code we are assuming it will get more
scrutiny still. This should allay some fears of someone using your
favorite rand() unix system call for doing DSS signing. If you choose
DSS, a strong statement regarding random number quality in signing is
needed. RSA needs random numbers in the ley generation phase, but does
not need it during signing.

This is not directly applicable to the work you are doing, but there
is a small thing that the Kerberos people did called /dev/random, which
captures randomness in the system and uses that as an ever ready source
of random numbers. I have also looked at using the dark current effects
of CCD arrays to get a load of cheap random numbers as well.

jerry