cryptographic ergodic sequence generators?

Jim Gillogly jim at acm.org
Sat Sep 6 14:35:34 EDT 2003


Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> For making things like IP fragmentation ids and other similar protocol
> elements unpredictable, it would be useful to have what I'll call a
> cryptographic ergodic sequence generator -- that is, a generator that
> will produce a sequence of n bit numbers such that there are no
> repeats until you pass the 2^nth number in the sequence (that is, the
> sequence is a permutation of all 2^n bit numbers) and such that it is
> very difficult to predict what the next number in the sequence might
> be beyond the fact that it will not be one of the numbers seen earlier
> in the sequence. It is also rather important that the generator be
> computationally inexpensive.
> 
> Anyone know how to produce such a thing?

How about Hasty Pudding Cipher on an n-bit block encrypting an n-bit
counter?  See http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~rcs/hpc/ .

If 'n' is too small, I suppose you'd run into attacks like the
blackjack 10-count, where you can get a little leverage if the
previous picks have been randomly overconcentrated.  For reasonable
n that shouldn't be a problem.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Highday, 9 Halimath S.R. 2003, 00:00
	12.19.10.9.17, 7 Caban 5 Mol, Eighth Lord of Night


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