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Bouncing balls in a drum and we can see what going on and are happy to see it's a pretty random chance. Just like Bingo here in the UK. Bouncing balls again.
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At school we were told the only true random event involves radioactive decay and exactly when a β particle would be emitted from a source.
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Apart from that it is not random! 1. once a ball number is picked that number cannot reoccur, which is extremely non-random behaviour.
2. There are significant mechanical biases with the balls and some balls get picked more than others.
Not so, at least not in American lotteries. Each of the numbers is independent. The probability of any number in each selection is not influenced by previous selections.
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WtpPepper said:1. I don't think we have ever seen enough Lotto balls to go through the system to say this. Local rags printed the number of balls that came up in results over a period of a few years. At the time in the UK there was one draw a week. Hardly a statistical analysis of a few hundred samples. Still it keeps the masses pouring their money into the system believing their house number is something important.
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Mr RB said:My comment was based on some memory of reading or hearing that when someone analysed the ball drops from many years of the lottery there were some numbers having a higher statistical bias.
Well if they are vary light like ping pong balls than I would have to say yes!I wonder whether numbers that require a lot of paint occur less frequently?
Appologies to the forum for a little rant but there are too many who understand statistics but very few who understand statistical analysis....of anything!
No doubt 2 out of 5 will disagree
I totally agree. A recent study showed that 87.3% of statistics are made up.
Written by academics and a Professor. Sorry. I am neither. I have however worked in the Maths/Electronics/Crypto industry for nigh on 25 years. It saddens me that people believe statistics on such a small number of samples. Professors included. It's like tossing a coin 3 times and 2 out of 3 come up heads. There is bound to be a bias on 3 counts.
Smoke detectors have small harmless radioactive sources. Why don't you use that as the basis for a hardware PRNG?
WTPpepper said:...
Written by academics and a Professor. Sorry. I am neither. I have however worked in the Maths/Electronics/Crypto industry for nigh on 25 years. It saddens me that people believe statistics on such a small number of samples. Professors included. It's like tossing a coin 3 times and 2 out of 3 come up heads.
... I believe there are some serious problems with the USEFULNESS of his PRNG hardware that I would like to bring to attention. Hopefully a resolution can be found.
Basically, one generally needs and uses a good PRNG specifically for cryptography.
... This COULD allow (A) Clone system based attacks, and (B) Forced biasing of the PRNG.
... (A) (clone attacks) Is possible because one could tap into your power line as close as is feasibly possible with a waveform analyzing system and record the data on the line down to a relatively arbitrary level of precision. With this information, the algorithm you use to construct your pseudo-random data, and your cipher text, the time it would take an attacker to crack your code would be quite feasible. Especially if they knew the approximate time that you created your cipher text. There may be some brute forcing involved, but it would be light and forward going. (i.e. not trapdoor functions)
... (B) (forced biasing) Is possible because, as Mr.RB pointed out, the exact noise on the line is determined by any devices attached to the line switching on and off at any given time. So if an attacker knows the time about that you are using your device, they could attach a sufficiently powerful load on the line and near your device as to dwarf other loads. They would also have accurate control of the devices on/off timing and duty cycle. Then... all that would need to be done is introduce an easy to pickup on signal, such as any signal that synchronizes with any part of the PRNG evenly. This could create significant and predictable bias in the output data, and thus in the cipher text.
It's direct output is not ideal for cryptography as like all hardware RNGs it is "too" random and can produce a bad data set when you extract a short section of data.
RB said:as I said on the web page...
RB said:You are talking about the RNG hardware (you said PRNG)?
RB said:Also studies of other mechanical systems show definite biases once there are large enough sample sizes, you should not assume that just because something is mechanical that it must be without bias. Re the lottery balls if they are slipperier or heavier or slightly mishaped those differences could all easily introduce a bias
The Scientists said:"If you know the speed and direction of EVERY particle in a system, and all forces acting on them. Mathematically, it's possible to predict the future for that system with 100% accuracy"
RB said:To force a bias over existing entropy requires "swamping" the existing entropy.
andRB said:...there are things affecting the AC mains waveform shape...
RB said:To force a bias over existing entropy requires "swamping" the existing entropy. [snip] would be almost impossible with AC mains entropy.
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