Re: [Caml-list] Cryptokit: cryptographic library for OCaml

[proff@iq.org (Julian Assange)]

> the AES implementation it provides just to generate pseudo-random
> numbers (don't laugh -- the PRNG in the library does exactly this).

It's interesting to think about what this means. If the cipher is
secure, then the entropy generated in the device breaking it is >=
the "entropy" in the PRNG stream. I would argue that provided
seeding is random, the PRNG is an RNG, because there is no simpler
description of the system than the PRNG output itself! Obviously
this isn't true for an infinite stream, so no fixed cipher has
infinite resolution as a PRNG (except for vernam, but that's
cheating). Yet it's possible to imagine a system of ciphers where
the amount of state held by the cipher was tightly coupled to the
amount of state theoretically revealed by the PRNG output, resulting
in infinite work to break infinite PRNG output.

--
 Julian Assange        |If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people
                       |together to collect wood or assign them tasks and
 proff@iq.org          |work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
 proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu  |immensity of the sea. -- Antoine de Saint Exupery
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