Statistical Testing of Cryptographic Randomness

Year 2016, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 1 - 11, 25.06.2016

Haydar Demirhan Nihan Bitirim

Abstract

Security of a cryptographic application is highly related to the quality of randomness of the mechanism used

to encrypt a message. A ciphering process used to encrypt a message is mainly based on the cryptographic

random numbers. There are numerous methods proposed to generate random numbers for cryptographic

applications in the literature. To decide whether a cryptographic random number generator is suitable for

cryptographic applications or not, various statistical randomness tests are introduced. In practice, test

batteries that contain more than one randomness test are constructed and all the tests in a battery are applied

to evaluate the quality of random number generator. In this article, we present a review of test batteries and

recent statistical randomness tests used to evaluate output of a cryptographic random number generator. We

criticize test batteries in the sense of multiple testing problem, highlight some misuses of statistical notions in

hypothesis testing of cryptographic randomness, and discuss potential solutions to multiple testing problem

seen in the test batteries.

Keywords

multiple testing, random number generator, test of randomness, test battery

Kriptografik Rasgeleliğin İstatistiksel Olarak Test Edilmesi

Abstract

uygulanmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, test kümeleri ve güncel olarak önerilmiş olan kriptografik rasgelelik testleri

derlenmiş, test kümeleri çoklu test problemi açısından değerlendirilmiş, bazı istatistiksel kavramların hatalı

kullanımları ve çoklu test problemine ilişkin olası çözümler üzerinde durulmuştur.

Keywords

Çoklu test problemi, rasgele sayı üreteci, rasgelelik testi, test kümesi.

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