Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades an der Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakult¨at der Paris-Lodron-Universit¨at Salzburg Andrea R¨ock Salzburg, M¨arz 2005 ii Abstract Random numbers are a fundamental tool in many cryptographic applications like key generation, encryption, masking protocols, or for internet gambling. We require generators which are able to produce large amounts of secure random numbers. Simple mathematical generators, like linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs), or hardware generators, like those based on radio active decay, are not sufficient for these applications. In this thesis we discuss the properties and a classification of cryptographic random number generators (RNGs) and introduce five different examples of practical generators: /dev/random, Yarrow, BBS, AES, and HAVEGE. For a complete overview of this topic we also provide an introduction to three math- ematical theories that are used in connection with random number generators. We focus our discussion on those theories that try to define the notion of randomness and address Shannon's entropy, Kolmogorov complexity and polynomial-time indistinguishability. In all three cases we study the relation between these theoretical notions and random number generators. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Peter Hellekalek, for his advice and encouragement during the development of my thesis and for finding time for me even in stressful moments. Especially, I express my gratitude towards him for always supporting my wish to visit foreign universities. I'm indebted to Nicolas Sendrier for welcoming me for one month in his research group at INRIA-Rocquencourt and for giving me the chance to to get a deeper insight into the functionality of the HAVEGE generator. The help of Stefan Wegenkittl with patiently answering my questions about Markov chains is greatly appreciated. I'm grateful to Peter Kritzer and C´edric Lauradoux for proofreading my thesis and for all their formal and textual advices which have been a great help during my writing process. Especially, I'm indebted to my parents Heinz and Elisabeth R¨ock, who always encour- aged and supported me in my studies. In particular, I would like to thank my mother for many mathematical discussions which helped me to solve several tricky problems. Last but not least, I wish to express my gratitude towards my sister, Susanne, and all my friends and colleagues in Tyrol, Salzburg, and all over the world which accompanied me during my studies. iv Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Outline and Summary . 3 I Theoretical Background 5 2 Overview 7 3 Entropy 9 3.1 Definition and Characteristics . 9 3.2 Entropy and RNGs . 14 3.2.1 RNG as Information Source . 15 3.2.2 External Input as Information Source . 15 3.2.3 Shifting of Entropy . 15 3.2.4 Entropy-Preserving Functions . 15 3.3 Estimation of Entropy . 18 3.3.1 Overlapping Serial Test . 21 3.3.2 Maurer's Universal Test . 22 3.3.3 Entropy and Cryptographic RNGs . 23 4 Kolmogorov Complexity 25 4.1 Definition and Characteristics . 26 4.1.1 Turing Machine (TM) . 26 4.1.2 Universal Turing Machine . 28 4.1.3 Complexity . 29 4.1.4 Incompressible Sequences . 30 4.1.5 Martin-L¨of Test of Randomness . 31 4.2 Kolmogorov Complexity and Shannon's Entropy . 34 4.3 Computability of Kolmogorov Complexity . 34 4.4 Kolmogorov Complexity and Cryptographic RNGs . 36 5 Polynomial-Time Indistinguishability 37 5.1 Definitions and Characteristics . 37 v vi CONTENTS 5.1.1 Existence of Pseudorandom Generators . 40 5.2 Polynomial-time Statistical Tests and Random-ness . 40 5.3 Polynomial-time and Efficiency . 41 5.4 Kolmogorov Complexity versus Computational Indistinguishability . 41 5.5 Pseudorandomness and Cryptographic PRNGs . 42 6 Summary of Part I 43 II Practical Generators 45 7 A Selection of Cryptographic RNGs 47 7.1 Three Categories . 47 7.1.1 Pseudorandom Number Generators . 47 7.1.2 Entropy Gathering Generators . 49 7.1.3 Hybrid Generators . 51 7.2 General Problems and Properties . 51 7.3 Description scheme . 53 7.3.1 Case 1: Constant transition function . 54 7.3.2 Case 2: Input-dependent transition function. 55 7.3.3 Cryptographic Strength . 55 8 Attacks 57 8.1 Direct Cryptanalytic Attacks . 57 8.1.1 Partial Precomputation Attack . 58 8.1.2 Timing Attack . 59 8.2 Input Based Attacks . 59 8.2.1 Chosen Input Attacks . 59 8.2.2 Known Input Attack . 60 8.3 State Compromise Extension Attacks . 61 8.3.1 Permanent Compromise Attack . 62 8.3.2 Backtracking Attack . 62 8.3.3 Integrative Guessing Attack . 62 8.3.4 Meet-In-The-Middle Attack . 63 9 /dev/random 65 9.1 General Structure . 65 9.2 State Space . 67 9.3 Transition Function . 67 9.3.1 Processing the Input . 67 9.3.2 Shifting the information . 69 9.3.3 Mixing the Secondary Pool . 71 CONTENTS vii 9.3.4 Input Space . 71 9.4 Output Function . 71 9.5 Security . 72 9.6 Empirical Results . 73 9.7 Portability . 73 9.8 Conclusion . 74 10 Yarrow 75 10.1 General Structure . 75 10.2 State Space . 77 10.3 Transition Function . 78 10.3.1 Entropy Gathering . 78 10.3.2 Reseed Control . 79 10.3.3 Reseed Mechanism . 79 10.3.4 Generator Gate . 80 10.3.5 Input Space . 80 10.4 Output Function . 81 10.5 Security . 81 10.6 Empirical Results . 81 10.7 Portability . 82 10.8 Conclusion . 82 11 Blum-Blum-Shub Generator 83 11.1 General Structure . 83 11.2 State Space . 84 11.3 Transition Function . 85 11.4 Output Function . 85 11.5 Security . 86 11.6 Empirical Results . 86 11.7 Portability . 86 11.8 Conclusion . 86 12 AES 89 12.1 General Structure . 89 12.2 State Space . 91 12.3 Transition Function . 91 12.4 Output Function (AES) . 92 12.5 Security . 94 12.6 Empirical Results . 95 12.7 Portability . 96 12.8 Conclusion . 96 viii CONTENTS 13 HAVEGE 99 13.1 General Structure . 100 13.1.1 Optimization Techniques of the Processor . 100 13.1.2 Functionality of HAVEGE . 103 13.1.3 General Structure . 104 13.2 State Space . 104 13.2.1 Seed (HAVEG) . 105 13.3 Transition Function . 106 13.3.1 Input Space . 106 13.4 Output Function . 107 13.5 Empirical Results . 107 13.6 Security . 108 13.7 Portability . ..
Recommended publications
  • 1 Perfect Secrecy of the One-Time Pad
    1 Perfect secrecy of the one-time pad In this section, we make more a more precise analysis of the security of the one-time pad. First, we need to define conditional probability. Let’s consider an example. We know that if it rains Saturday, then there is a reasonable chance that it will rain on Sunday. To make this more precise, we want to compute the probability that it rains on Sunday, given that it rains on Saturday. So we restrict our attention to only those situations where it rains on Saturday and count how often this happens over several years. Then we count how often it rains on both Saturday and Sunday. The ratio gives an estimate of the desired probability. If we call A the event that it rains on Saturday and B the event that it rains on Sunday, then the intersection A ∩ B is when it rains on both days. The conditional probability of A given B is defined to be P (A ∩ B) P (B | A)= , P (A) where P (A) denotes the probability of the event A. This formula can be used to define the conditional probability of one event given another for any two events A and B that have probabilities (we implicitly assume throughout this discussion that any probability that occurs in a denominator has nonzero probability). Events A and B are independent if P (A ∩ B)= P (A) P (B). For example, if Alice flips a fair coin, let A be the event that the coin ends up Heads. If Bob rolls a fair six-sided die, let B be the event that he rolls a 3.
    [Show full text]
  • 6.045J Lecture 13: Pseudorandom Generators and One-Way Functions
    6.080/6.089 GITCS April 4th, 2008 Lecture 16 Lecturer: Scott Aaronson Scribe: Jason Furtado Private-Key Cryptography 1 Recap 1.1 Derandomization In the last six years, there have been some spectacular discoveries of deterministic algorithms, for problems for which the only similarly-efficient solutions that were known previously required randomness. The two most famous examples are • the Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena (AKS) algorithm for determining if a number is prime or composite in deterministic polynomial time, and • the algorithm of Reingold for getting out of a maze (that is, solving the undirected s-t con­ nectivity problem) in deterministic LOGSPACE. Beyond these specific examples, mounting evidence has convinced almost all theoretical com­ puter scientists of the following Conjecture: Every randomized algorithm can be simulated by a deterministic algorithm with at most polynomial slowdown. Formally, P = BP P . 1.2 Cryptographic Codes 1.2.1 Caesar Cipher In this method, a plaintext message is converted to a ciphertext by simply adding 3 to each letter, wrapping around to A after you reach Z. This method is breakable by hand. 1.2.2 One-Time Pad The “one-time pad” uses a random key that must be as long as the message we want to en­ crypt. The exclusive-or operation is performed on each bit of the message and key (Msg ⊕ Key = EncryptedMsg) to end up with an encrypted message. The encrypted message can be decrypted by performing the same operation on the encrypted message and the key to retrieve the message (EncryptedMsg⊕Key = Msg). An adversary that intercepts the encrypted message will be unable to decrypt it as long as the key is truly random.
    [Show full text]
  • Pseudorandomness
    ~ MathDefs ~ CS 127: Cryptography / Boaz Barak Pseudorandomness Reading: Katz-Lindell Section 3.3, Boneh-Shoup Chapter 3 The nature of randomness has troubled philosophers, scientists, statisticians and laypeople for many years.1 Over the years people have given different answers to the question of what does it mean for data to be random, and what is the nature of probability. The movements of the planets initially looked random and arbitrary, but then the early astronomers managed to find order and make some predictions on them. Similarly we have made great advances in predicting the weather, and probably will continue to do so in the future. So, while these days it seems as if the event of whether or not it will rain a week from today is random, we could imagine that in some future we will be able to perfectly predict it. Even the canonical notion of a random experiment- tossing a coin - turns out that it might not be as random as you’d think, with about a 51% chance that the second toss will have the same result as the first one. (Though see also this experiment.) It is conceivable that at some point someone would discover some function F that given the first 100 coin tosses by any given person can predict the value of the 101th.2 Note that in all these examples, the physics underlying the event, whether it’s the planets’ movement, the weather, or coin tosses, did not change but only our powers to predict them. So to a large extent, randomness is a function of the observer, or in other words If a quantity is hard to compute, it might as well be random.
    [Show full text]
  • 6.080 / 6.089 Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science Spring 2008
    MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu 6.080 / 6.089 Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science Spring 2008 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms. 6.080/6.089 GITCS April 4th, 2008 Lecture 16 Lecturer: Scott Aaronson Scribe: Jason Furtado Private-Key Cryptography 1 Recap 1.1 Derandomization In the last six years, there have been some spectacular discoveries of deterministic algorithms, for problems for which the only similarly-efficient solutions that were known previously required randomness. The two most famous examples are • the Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena (AKS) algorithm for determining if a number is prime or composite in deterministic polynomial time, and • the algorithm of Reingold for getting out of a maze (that is, solving the undirected s-t con­ nectivity problem) in deterministic LOGSPACE. Beyond these specific examples, mounting evidence has convinced almost all theoretical com­ puter scientists of the following Conjecture: Every randomized algorithm can be simulated by a deterministic algorithm with at most polynomial slowdown. Formally, P = BP P . 1.2 Cryptographic Codes 1.2.1 Caesar Cipher In this method, a plaintext message is converted to a ciphertext by simply adding 3 to each letter, wrapping around to A after you reach Z. This method is breakable by hand. 1.2.2 One-Time Pad The “one-time pad” uses a random key that must be as long as the message we want to en­ crypt. The exclusive-or operation is performed on each bit of the message and key (Msg ⊕ Key = EncryptedMsg) to end up with an encrypted message.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 3: Randomness in Computation
    Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science Summer 2013 Lecture 3: Randomness in Computation Lecturer: Kurt Mehlhorn & He Sun Randomness is one of basic resources and appears everywhere. In computer science, we study randomness due to the following reasons: 1. Randomness is essential for computers to simulate various physical, chemical and biological phenomenon that are typically random. 2. Randomness is necessary for Cryptography, and several algorithm design tech- niques, e.g. sampling and property testing. 3. Even though efficient deterministic algorithms are unknown for many problems, simple, elegant and fast randomized algorithms are known. We want to know if these randomized algorithms can be derandomized without losing the efficiency. We address these in this lecture, and answer the following questions: (1) What is randomness? (2) How can we generate randomness? (3) What is the relation between randomness and hardness and other disciplines of computer science and mathematics? 1 What is Randomness? What are random binary strings? One may simply answer that every 0/1-bit appears with the same probability (50%), and hence 00000000010000000001000010000 is not random as the number of 0s is much more than the number of 1s. How about this sequence? 00000000001111111111 The sequence above contains the same number of 0s and 1s. However most people think that it is not random, as the occurrences of 0s and 1s are in a very unbalanced way. So we roughly call a string S 2 f0; 1gn random if for every pattern x 2 f0; 1gk, the numbers of the occurrences of every x of the same length are almost the same.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 7: Pseudo Random Generators 1 Introduction 2
    Introduction to Cryptography 02/06/2018 Lecture 7: Pseudo Random Generators Instructor: Vipul Goyal Scribe: Eipe Koshy 1 Introduction Randomness is very important in modern computational systems. For example, randomness is needed for encrypting a session key in an SSL connection or for encrypting a hard drive. There are multiple challenges associated with generating randomness for modern systems: • True randomness is difficult to get • Large amounts of randomness are needed in practice Given these challenges, several different input sources are used for randomness on modern systems. For example, key strokes or mouse movements can be used as a source of randomness. However, these sources are limited in the amount of randomness they can generate. In addition, it is critical that the sources of randomness be truly random or close to being truly random. Several crypto-systems have been defeated1 because their randomness generators were broken (i.e. not truly random.) As a solution to both the challenges detailed above for generating randomness, an approach to build a kind of randomness generator that creates random strings of a desired length would be to first, start off with building a short random string (of length, say, n bits), and then, expand it to a longer random looking string k (of length, say, l(n) bits.) We can represent this "randomness" generator as f : f0; 1gn ! f0; 1gl(n) A key question is: Can we can really expand a short string with a few random bits into a longer string with many random bits? The answer lies in the definition of the term "random looking" that we we used in our definition above.
    [Show full text]
  • Pseudorandom Generators
    8 Pseudorandom Generators Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science Saarland University, Summer 2014 Randomness is one of the fundamental computational resources and appears everywhere. In computer science, we study randomness due to the following reasons: First, computers are used to simulate various random processes in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Second, ran- domness is widely used in Cryptography, and a few techniques of algorithm design (e.g. sampling, random walks) rely on randomness. Third, even though efficient deterministic al- gorithms are unknown for many problems, simple, elegant and fast randomized algorithms are known and easy to analyze. For many problems (e.g. primality testing), usually we have efficient randomized algorithms at first before we obtain deterministic polynomial-time algo- rithms eventually. This leads the question of derandomization, i.e., if we have a general way to derandomize randomized algorithms without significantly increasing their runtime. The answer to these questions have lead to the study of pseudorandomness. In today’s lecture, we will address the following three questions: (1) What is randomness? What are the possible ways to define randomness? (2) How do computer programs generate random numbers? Are these numbers truly random? (3) What the relationship between randomness and other disciplines of Computer Science and Mathematics? 8.1 What is Randomness? What are random binary strings? The best way to think about perfect randomness is as an arbitrary long sequence of binary strings, where every 0 or 1 appears equally, i.e. every 0/1- bit appears with the same probability (50%) in a random order. For instance, the string 00000000010000000001000010000 is not random as the number of 0s is much more than the number of 1s.
    [Show full text]
  • P Vs BPP 1 Prof
    18.405J/6.841J: Advanced Complexity Theory Spring 2016 Lecture 20: P vs BPP 1 Prof. Dana Moshkovitz Scribe: Anonymous Student Scribe Date: Fall 2012 1 Overview Today we will move on to the topic of pseudorandomness. We will begin by introducing pseudo- random generators and why they are important, with emphasis on their relation to the P versus BPP problem. We will also look at the history of the the theory of pseudorandomness, to gain an insight into the throught process that went into it. Finally, we will introduce the Nisan-Wigderson generator and begin to prove that it is a pseudorandom generator under certain assumptions. We will finish the proof next class. 2 Pseudorandomness 2.1 Defining Pseudorandomness We have already seen randomness in a variety of contexts in the class. However, it is important to consider exactly what randomness means. For instance, is the following bit sequence random? 010110111000011011110010001 What about the following sequence? 000000000000000000000000000 It seems like the former sequence is more random than the latter. We cannot easily find any patterns in it, for instance. However, by most definitions of randomness, a single string can never be random. In [1], Blum and Micali sought to give a useful definition of randomness that could be used in modern Complexity and Cryptography. The main idea they devised is that randomness is in the eye of the beholder. They thus define a pasudo-random generator to be a (deterministic) algorithm G which takes in a seed of length s and produces a string longer than s as its output, with the condition that any distinguisher algorithm with some constraints on it cannot distinguish the output from random.
    [Show full text]
  • Pseudorandomness by Salil P
    Foundations and TrendsR in Theoretical Computer Science Vol. 7, Nos. 1–3 (2011) 1–336 c 2012 S. P. Vadhan DOI: 10.1561/0400000010 Pseudorandomness By Salil P. Vadhan Contents 1 Introduction 2 1.1 Overview of this Survey 2 1.2 Background Required and Teaching Tips 7 1.3 Notational Conventions 8 1.4 Chapter Notes and References 8 2 The Power of Randomness 10 2.1 Polynomial Identity Testing 10 2.2 The Computational Model and Complexity Classes 17 2.3 Sampling and Approximation Problems 23 2.4 Random Walks and S-T Connectivity 32 2.5 Exercises 40 2.6 Chapter Notes and References 46 3 Basic Derandomization Techniques 50 3.1 Enumeration 51 3.2 Nonconstructive/Nonuniform Derandomization 52 3.3 Nondeterminism 56 3.4 The Method of Conditional Expectations 58 3.5 Pairwise Independence 62 3.6 Exercises 73 3.7 Chapter Notes and References 77 4 Expander Graphs 80 4.1 Measures of Expansion 80 4.2 Random Walks on Expanders 92 4.3 Explicit Constructions 102 4.4 Undirected S-T Connectivity in Deterministic Logspace 116 4.5 Exercises 121 4.6 Chapter Notes and References 127 5 List-Decodable Codes 131 5.1 Definitions and Existence 131 5.2 List-Decoding Algorithms 141 5.3 List-decoding Views of Samplers and Expanders 151 5.4 Expanders from Parvaresh–Vardy Codes 155 5.5 Exercises 159 5.6 Chapter Notes and References 163 6 Randomness Extractors 166 6.1 Motivation and Definition 167 6.2 Connections to Other Pseudorandom Objects 178 6.3 Constructing Extractors 188 6.4 Exercises 202 6.5 Chapter Notes and References 209 7 Pseudorandom Generators 212 7.1 Motivation
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 19 – Randomness, Pseudo Randomness, and Confidentiality
    Lecture 19 – Randomness, Pseudo Randomness, and Confidentiality Stephen Checkoway University of Illinois at Chicago CS 487 – Fall 2017 Slides from Miller and Bailey’s ECE 422 Randomness and Pseudorandomness Review Problem: Integrity of message sent from Alice to Bob Append bits to message that only Alice and Bob can make Solution: Message Authentication Code (MAC) Practical solution: Hash-based MAC (HMAC) – HMAC-SHA256k(M) Where do these random keys k come from … ? Careful: We’re often sloppy about what is “random” True Randomness Output of a physical process that is inherently random Scarce, and hard to get Pseudorandom Function (PRF) Sampled from a family of functions using a key Pseudorandom generator (PRG) Takes small seed that is really random Generates a stream (arbitrarily long sequence) of numbers that are “as good as random” Definition: PRG is secure if it’s indistinguishable from a random stream of bits Similar game to PRF definition: 1. We flip a coin secretly to get a bit b 2. If b=0, let s be a truly random stream If b=1, let s be gk for random secret k 3. Mallory can see as much of the output of s as he/she wants 4. Mallory guesses b, wins if guesses correctly g is a secure PRG if no winning strategy for Mallory* Here’s a simple PRG that works: For some random k and PRF f, output: fk(0) || fk(1) || fk(2) || … Theorem: If f is a secure PRF, and g is built from f by this construction, then g is a secure PRG.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 7 1 Examples of Pseudorandom Generator
    Com Sci 282A: Foundations of Cryptography Prof. Rafail Ostrosky Lecture 7 Lecture date: Wednesday, 4 of February, 2004 Scribe: Jiejun Kong 1 Examples of pseudorandom generator 1. RSA: RSA scheme employs a collection of functions indexed on (N, e), where N is a 1 product of two ( 2 · log2 N)-bit primes, denoted P and Q, and e is an integer smaller than N and relatively prime to φ(N) = (P −1)·(Q−1). d is e’s multiplicative inverse such that e·d≡1 (mod φ(N)). RSA encryption/verification is defined as f(x)= xe mod N. RSA decryption/signing is defined as 1 f − (x)= xd mod N. Given the fact that d, e are relatively prime to (P − 1) · (Q − 1), it can be shown that the functions are in fact permutation over its domain. In other words, the RSA collection is a collection of permutations. An RSA pseudorandom generator produces a pseudorandom ensemble as below: (1) ∗ choose x from ZN in uniform distribution; (2) output least significant bit of x; (3) substitute x with xe mod N. Go back to (2). 2. Rabin: Let P ≡Q≡3 mod 4 and N = P ·Q. An Rabin pseudorandom generator pro- ∗ duces a pseudorandom ensemble as below: (1) choose x from ZN in uniform distribu- tion; (2) output least significant bit of x; (3) substitute x with x2 mod N. Go back to (2). It is known that if factoring is broken then RSA is broken, but the other direction is not known. It is known that factoring and Rabin are equally hard.
    [Show full text]
  • Concealment and Its Applications to Authenticated Encryption
    Concealment and Its Applications to Authenticated Encryption Yevgeniy Dodis1 and Jee Hea An2 1 Department of Computer Science, New York University, USA. [email protected] 2 SoftMax Inc., San Diego, USA. [email protected] Abstract. We introduce a new cryptographic primitive we call conceal- ment, which is related, but quite different from the notion of commit- ment. A concealment is a publicly known randomized transformation, which, on input m, outputs a hider h and a binder b. Together, h and b allow one to recover m, but separately, (1) the hider h reveals “no infor- mation” about m, while (2) the binder b can be “meaningfully opened” by at most one hider h. While setting b = m, h = ∅ is a trivial concealment, the challenge is to make |b||m|, which we call a “non-trivial” con- cealment. We show that non-trivial concealments are equivalent to the existence of collision-resistant hash functions. Moreover, our construc- tion of concealments is extremely simple, optimal, and yet very general, giving rise to a multitude of efficient implementations. We show that concealments have natural and important applications in the area of authenticated encryption. Specifically, let AE be an authen- ticated encryption scheme (either public- or symmetric-key) designed to work on short messages. We show that concealments are exactly the right abstraction allowing one to use AE for encrypting long messages. Namely, to encrypt “long” m, one uses a concealment scheme to get h and b, and outputs authenticated ciphertext AE(b),h. More surpris- ingly, the above paradigm leads to a very simple and general solution to the problem of remotely keyed (authenticated) encryption (RKAE) [12,13].
    [Show full text]