4 ms·

Do you know anywhere I could read more about this?

• AlotOfReading 2y ago
  For the mathematical background (i.e. the theory and behavior in idealized models), standard cryptography books are excellent. I recall that both Serious Cryptography and Handbook of Applied Cryptography have excellent introductions to the topic of rho structures that underlie the specific issue I mentioned. Where I've found them lacking is getting a practical understanding of how important these issues are in the specific situations we see in the real world. For example, if you were to run Blake2b in 8 bit mode with the above construction, what would your PRNG period actually be? In the ideal case it would 2^(8). In practice, the best you'll get is 26 or 10% of the ideal case. There's a significant probability you won't get that either for a given seed, as much of the state space actually drops into a lower period cycle. The issue is that a real hash isn't the correct construction here, even though a mathematically ideal hash would be fine. I'm not aware of any actual reference material for that kind of stuff and the people I've met who are knowledgeable learned from seeing other's mistakes.