NeuG USB True Random Number Generator

Re:NeuG USB True Random Number Generator by sowbug on Friday January 05, 2018 @01:26PM (#16080470)

You might be interested in reading about Fortuna https://www.schneier.com/academic/fortuna/. It's an example of a class of PRNGs that are explicitly designed to generate cryptographically secure random numbers from a pool of sources including sources under an attacker's control.

I don't know the first thing about cryptanalysis, but what I gather from skimming the PDF is that yes, it's possible to advantageously influence a PRNG with bad inputs if the mixer sucks.

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Re:NeuG USB True Random Number Generator by tptacek on Friday January 05, 2018 @02:25PM (#16080917)

This is a feature of basically every modern CSPRNG and a basic consequence of the crypto primitives we use to design CSPRNGs.

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Re:NeuG USB True Random Number Generator by sowbug on Friday January 05, 2018 @04:27PM (#16081812)

That's good to hear. It seems intuitive that it should be impractical to usefully influence randomness; if I can predict anything after a whitening step, isn't that whitening step horribly broken? But I've learned to squelch my intuition when it comes to cryptography.

(Now would be a great time to plug Matasano...)

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Re:NeuG USB True Random Number Generator by tptacek on Friday January 05, 2018 @04:35PM (#16081894)

Well, several years ago would be a good time to plug Matasano, since it doesn't exist anymore. :)

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Re:NeuG USB True Random Number Generator by sowbug on Friday January 05, 2018 @06:54PM (#16082827)

:) I meant the crypto challenge, which I hope would give someone like me a little more confidence in that field.

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