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:

    ...I didn’t consider intellectuals intelligent, I never liked them or their thoughts about life. I defined them as people who care nothing for argument, who are interested only in information; or as people who have a preference for learning things rather than experiencing them. They have opinions but no point of view.... Their talk is the gloomiest type of human discourse I know.... This is a red flag to my nature. Intellectuals, to me have no natures ...
    Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)

    The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.
    Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)

    And catch the gleaming of a random light,
    That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
    Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)

    Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)