Anyone who has dabbled at cryptograpy would know the difference between a PRNG and a TRNG :)
PRNG - Psuedo Random Number Generator
TRNG - True Random Number Generator
So, what's the real fuss on randomness? And why is it important to understand how random-number generators work?
First and foremost, we have to understand that most random-number generators depend on some mathematical formula to derive a "random" number - based on an input (called as seed).
Since a deterministic algorithm is used to arrive at the random number, these numbers are called as "pseudo-random"; i.e. they appear random to the casual observer, but can be hacked.
For e.g. the typical algorithm used by the java.util.Random() class is illustrated
here. Such a PRNG would always produce the same sequence of random numbers for a given seed - even if run on different computers. Hence if someone can guess the initial seed, then it would be possible to predict the next sequence of random numbers. The default constructor of Random() class uses the "system time" as the seed and hence this option is a little bit more secure that manually providing the 'seed'. But still it is possible for an attacker to synchronize into the stream of such random
numbers and therefore calculate all future random numbers!
So how can we generate true random numbers? There are multiple options here:
1) Use a
hardware random number generator. Snippet from Wikipedia:
"Such devices are often based on microscopic phenomena that generate a low-level, statistically random 'noise' signal, such as thermal noise or the photoelectric effect or other quantum phenomena.
A hardware random number generator typically consists of a transducer to convert some aspect of the physical phenomena to an electrical signal, an amplifier and other electronic circuitry to increase the amplitude of the random fluctuations to a macroscopic level, and some type of analog to digital converter to convert the output into a digital number, often a simple binary digit 0 or 1.
By repeatedly sampling the randomly varying signal, a series of random numbers is obtained"
2) Use cryptographically secure random number generators (TRNG): These number generators collect entropy from various inputs that are truly unpredictable. For e.g. on Linux,
/dev/random works in a sophisticated manner to capture hardware interrupts, CPU clock speeds, network packets, user inputs from keyboard, etc. to arrive at a truly random seed.
On Windows, many parameters such as process ID, thread ID, the system clock, the system time, the system counter, memory status, free disk clusters, the hashed user environment bloc, etc. are used to seed the PRNG.
On the Java platform, it is recommended to use the
java.security.SecureRandom class, as it delegates the entropy finding to a CSP (Cryptography Service Provider) that typically delegates the calls to the OS.
3) Use a third-party webservice that would return true random numbers. For e.g.
http://www.random.org/ would provide you with random numbers generated from 'atmospheric noise'.
The site
Hotbits would provide you with random numbers derived from unpredictable radioactive decay.
