[onerng talk] Another source of seed data ...

[Peter Gutmann]

Paul Campbell <paul at taniwha.com>writes:

>but yes it is a bit of a gimmick - but it does assume that nation-states
>can't game the results of their national lotteries ....

The concept is similar to the one used for the numbers racket in the 1920s and
1930s, you use as your random seed the results of an unpredictable number that
was published the following day.  Otto "Abba Dabba" Berman figured out how to
fix this, making a small fortune for his boss Dutch Schultz.

Peter.













OneRNG

































Another
 source of seed data ... 


by
Paul
 Campbell 


in
OneRNG
 Talk 
















On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 03:04:47 Peter Gutmann wrote:

> This is for a publicly-verifiable source of randomness rather than a secure

> PRNG, and it's mostly a clever-gimmick idea (as are many others of this

> form). An easier-to-work-with one would be to use a fixed historical

> document (your favourite bit of Shakespeare, the Gettysburg address,

> something ascribed to Confucius, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

> cthulhu fhtagn, whatever) to seed a PRNG.

 

I think the important difference here is that you can't pick and choose a seed

that suits you (maybe Othello happens to make a particularly trivial curve) -

instead you nominate ahead of time a bunch of verifiable lotteries before they

happen, seal your choices a bunch of ways with a verifiable timestamp (like in

the blockchain), wait for the draws then use them - this way you don't know

the actual numbers before you choose their sources and can't game the result

by choosing ones that suit you

 

but yes it is a bit of a gimmick - but it does assume that nation-states can't

game the results of their national lotteries ....

 

Paul













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