On the "randomness" of DNS

Ben Laurie ben at links.org
Wed Jul 30 15:06:23 EDT 2008


Pierre-Evariste Dagand wrote:
>>  But just how GREAT is that, really? Well, we don'
>>  t know. Why? Because there isn't actually a way test for randomness. Your
>> DNS resolver could be using some easily predicted random number generator
>> like, say, a linear congruential one, as is common in the rand() library
>> function, but DNS-OARC would still say it was GREAT. Believe them when they
>> say it isn't GREAT, though!
> 
> Well, they are some tests to judge the "quality" of a random number
> generator. The best known being the Diehard tests:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests
> http://stat.fsu.edu/pub/diehard/
> 
> For sure, these tests might be an overkill here. Also, there must be
> some tests in the Art of Computer Programming too but I don't have it
> at hand right now (shame on me).

I doubt you can get a large enough sample in any reasonable time.

> I don't see the point of evaluating the quality of a random number
> generator by statistical tests.

Which is entirely my point.

> But I might be wrong, though.
> 
> Regards,
> 


-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html           http://www.links.org/

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

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