Nicholas is working at a bank in Germany. He is looking at German standards for pseudo random number generators. He wants a good PRNG for generating symmetric keys. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has established four criteria for quality of random number generators. Which ones can be used for cryptography?
Select all that apply, then click Submit answer.
Reference / correct answer:
Explanation
K3 and K4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator
The German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, BSI) has established four criteria for quality of deterministic random number generators.They are summarized here:
K1 – There should be a high probability that generated sequences of random numbers are different from each other.
K2 – A sequence of numbers is indistinguishable from "truly random" numbers according to specified statistical tests. The tests are the monobit test (equal numbers of ones and zeros in the sequence), poker test (a special instance of the chi-squared test), runs test (counts the frequency of runs of various lengths), longruns test (checks whether there exists any run of length 34 or greater in 20 000 bits of the sequence)—both from BSI and NIST, and the autocorrelation test. In essence, these requirements are a test of how well a bit sequence: has zeros and ones equally often; after a sequence of n zeros (or ones), the next bit a one (or zero) with probability one-half; and any selected subsequence contains no information about the next element(s) in the sequence.
K3 – It should be impossible for an attacker (for all practical purposes) to calculate, or otherwise guess, from any given subsequence, any previous or future values in the sequence, nor any inner state of the generator.
K4 – It should be impossible, for all practical purposes, for an attacker to calculate, or guess from an inner state of the generator, any previous numbers in the sequence or any previous inner generator states.
For cryptographic applications, only generators meeting the K3 or K4 standards are acceptable.
