4 ms·
Why would anyone trust a public random source? It may be truly random, but it can also be completely recorded such that if anyone uses this as a random source
by motters 13y ago
Why would anyone trust a public random source? It may be truly random, but it can also be completely recorded such that if anyone uses this as a random source and the timestamp is known then the encryption can be broken.
- midas007 13y agoIt's really nothing novel [0], there was the Lava Lamp RNG. [1] Except the generation source might be technically interesting, if you at all trust the overarching politics. [0] http://www.random.org/ http://www.random.org/ [1] http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://lavarand.sgi.com http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://lavarand.sgi.com
- Perseids 13y agoYou cannot use that randomness for private key or private data generation, true. But there are less common usage scenarios that need unpredictable randomness that is guaranteed to be generated only after a certain point in time. For two party protocols you can exchange nonces to prove that both parties are participating in this exact moment, but those don't scale to thousands of mutually distrustful parties. An example for that is the proposed Bitcoin protocol change that is already cited by swordswinger12 which prevents attackers from hoarding Bitcoin blocks.
- ef47d35620c1 13y agoMixing it into other sources of randomness could not hurt your crypto. Using it as the only source would be very bad.