Random Number Generator Attack - Human Generation of Random Quantities

Human Generation of Random Quantities

Humans generally do poorly at generating random quantities. Magicians, professional gamblers and con artists depend on the predictability of human behavior. In World War II German code clerks were instructed to select three letters at random to be the initial rotor setting for each Enigma machine message. Instead some chose predictable values like their own or a girlfriend's initials, greatly aiding allied breaking of these encryption systems. Another example is the often predictable ways computer users choose passwords. (See Password cracking.)

Nevertheless, in the specific case of playing mixed strategy games, use of human gameplay entropy for randomness generation was studied by Ran Halprin and Moni Naor."Games for Extracting Randomness". http://www.neko.co.il/MAE-offline.html.

Read more about this topic:  Random Number Generator Attack

Famous quotes containing the words human, generation, random and/or quantities:

    The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chronicled ... never before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    poor Felix Randal;
    How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
    When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
    Didst fettle for the great gray drayhorse his bright and battering
    sandal!
    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

    James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.
    Imamu Amiri Baraka [Everett Leroi Jones] (b. 1934)