[136277] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: combining entropy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Mon Oct 27 16:48:51 2008
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:10:54 +0100
From: "Ben Laurie" <benl@google.com>
To: IanG <iang@systemics.com>
Cc: Cryptography <cryptography@metzdowd.com>
In-Reply-To: <490305A0.8050104@systemics.com>
On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:40 PM, IanG <iang@systemics.com> wrote:
> Jonathan Katz wrote:
>> I think it depends on what you mean by "N pools of entropy".
>
>
> I can see that my description was a bit weak, yes. Here's a better
> view, incorporating the feedback:
>
> If I have N people, each with a single pool of entropy,
> and I pool each of their contributions together with XOR,
> is that as good as it gets?
I think you need to define what you mean by "as good as it gets".
Clearly XOR loses entropy that might be there, so on the measure of
"good == most entropy", it is not.
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