[7923] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: human failings question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rick Smith)
Wed Oct 4 18:17:22 2000
Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.0.20001004095836.00bc15e0@mailhost.sctc.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 10:20:18 -0500
To: "Nina H. Fefferman" <feferman@Math.Princeton.EDU>, coderpunks@toad.com
From: Rick Smith <rick_smith@securecomputing.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0010032103510.28648-100000@Math.Princeton.ED
U>
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At 08:07 PM 10/3/00, Nina H. Fefferman wrote:
> Does anyone know where (if at all) I can find statistics for the
>predictable strings humans tend to produce when asked to create a
>"random" sequence of zeros and ones? Maybe cognitive science papers?
> Has anyone seen these?
Ooh, if you ever find such a thing, I'd love to see it. I didn't know that
anyone had ever produced such a study. I've heard of a few things close to
this, though:
1. People have written about the qualities of one time pads (OTPs) used by
spies. The pads consist of row after row of typed digits. Someone (David
Kahn in "Codebreakers" perhaps) noted that there was a tendency to
alternate digits from the left hand and digits from the right hand.
2. Leo Marks spoke about OTPs in "Between Silk and Cyanide," the story of
his experiences writing codes for British spies in WWII. He referred to
some comparison done between hand typed OTPs and pads generated by machine
at Bletchley Park. I think they actually preferred the hand typed OTPs for
some reason.
3. There's a bunch of work in keystroke timing that might provide insight
into peoples' tendencies to type some things instead of others. There's a
chapter on it in "Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society,"
edited by Jain, Bolle, and Pankanti. If there's nothing in there, it will
at least have a long list of related references.
I don't know of anything specific about bits, since I don't know anyone who
routinely types bits any more, random or otherwise.
Rick.
smith@securecomputing.com
