3 ms·
Honestly, the post reads as cryptographically incompetent to me. > Just in case the Mersenne Twister algorithm has any unknown vulnerabilities The Mersenne Tw
by stouset 12y ago
Honestly, the post reads as cryptographically incompetent to me.
> Just in case the Mersenne Twister algorithm has any unknown vulnerabilities
The Mersenne Twister has known vulnerabilities. Seeing 624 iterations of the output is enough to reconstruct all future outputs.
Does this affect their algorithm in practice? I don't know — but just as it's better to lay a building on a strong foundation rather than sand, it's better to design secure protocols with strong cryptographic components with well-tested security features and proofs than to compose multiple weak components and hope for the best.
This protocol also only demonstrates that the casino is "fair", in that it's shuffling decks in an ordering which is not known to the casino ahead of time. This is a far cry from "secure", which would (amongst other things) ensure the casino doesn't even know which card it's dealing until the card has been dealt (ensuring the casino can't collude with other players), and that other players can't predict the next cards with a better probability than random luck.