[16662] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: entropy depletion
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Denker)
Fri Jan 7 16:31:43 2005
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:28:29 -0500
From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
To: Jerrold Leichter <jerrold.leichter@smarts.com>
Cc: Enzo Michelangeli <em@em.no-ip.com>, cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.61.0501070922300.21665@frame>
Jerrold Leichter asked:
>
> .... random number generator this way. .... Just what *is*
> good enough?
That's a good question. I think there is a good answer. It
sheds light on the distinction of pseudorandomness versus
entropy:
A long string produced by a good PRNG is conditionally
compressible in the sense that we know there exists a shorter
representation, but at the same time we believe it to be
conditionally incompressible in the sense that the adversaries
have no feasible way of finding a shorter representation.
In contrast,
A long string produced by a HESG is unconditionally, absolutely
incompressible. There does not exist a shorter representation.
There cannot possibly exist a shorter representation.
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