THE WWW VIRTUAL LIBRARY:
RANDOM NUMBERS and MONTE CARLO METHODS

CRYPTOGRAPHIC RANDOM NUMBERS

WORKSHOP HASH & STREAM
On February 1 and 2, 2007, the workshop '' Hash & Stream" on the state of the art in cryptanalysis of hash functions and stream ciphers was held at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Salzburg (see programme). The workshop was organized by Peter Hellekalek.
 
Below, we offer the slides of the talks:

• Introductory talk on cryptographic hash functions and their cryptanalysis by Vincent Rijmen (TU Graz),
• Recent attacks on hash functions, by Vincent Rijmen,
• Most recent attacks on SHA-1 , by Christian Rechberger (TU Graz),
• Practical impact of the recent attacks and what will happen now, by Norbert Pramstaller (TU Graz),
• Cryptanalysis of alternative hash functions, by Florian Mendel (TU Graz),
• Design and recent analysis of eSTREAM candidates, by Willi Meier, (UAS, Aargau).

ALGORITHMS

• Cryptographic algorithms: an overview of commonly used algorithms and methods is provided by SSH Communications Security (see their "Support/Cryptography A-Z" pages).
• Links provided by Ron Rivest (MIT)

RANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS
Cryptographic random number generators will have to be unpredictable, in addition to many other randomness properties that are required. This rules out most RNGs that are used in stochastic simulation.

• Cryptographic random numbers: A rather comprehensive list of links offered by David Wagner from Berkeley.
• Random Noise Sources: A survey by Arnold Reinhold.
• Why Cryptography Is Harder Than It Looks. An essay on the threats to, and security of computer systems by Bruce Schneier
• Hardware random number generators: testing and applications, by R. Davies
• SG100: Protego, a Swedish company, offers a hardware random number generator
• id Quantique has designed a random number generator based on a quantum optics process.

TESTS

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a battery of statistical tests to detect "non-randomness" in binary sequences. The so-called NIST-battery of tests has become a de-facto standard for cryptographic generators, see their webpage on Random Number Generation and Testing.
• As we have indicated on our Tests page, any new standard will have to consider the TESTU01 library of L'Ecuyer and Simard (Montreal University) as a basis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Conference Papers Online (CRYPT, EUROCRYPT, CHES conferences), a service offered by Cryptography Research, Inc.
• Bibliography on cryptography and security, by Alf-Christian Achilles
• Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Menezes, van Oorschot and Vanstone
• Entropy on the World Wide Web, by Roland Gunesch et al.

LINKS

• BarCodesInc links to cryptography, packed full of information on cryptography. Everything from tutorials, to legal issues, to government resources.
• Web pages of interest to cryptography researchers, by Kevin McCurley

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