Re: Fortuna

David Wagner
2005-04-16T01:21:05Z

Jean-Luc Cooke wrote:
>Info-theoretic randomness is a strong desire of some/many users, [..]

I don't know. Most of the time that I've seen users say they want
information-theoretic randomness, I've gotten the impression that those
users didn't really understand what information-theoretic randomness means,
and their applications usually didn't need information-theoretic randomness
in the first place.

As for those who reject computational security because of its
unproven nature, they should perhaps be warned that any conjectured
information-theoretic security of /dev/random is also unproven.

Personally, I feel the issue of information-theoretic security
is a distraction. Given the widespread confusion about what
information-theoretic security means, I certainly sympathize with why
Jean-Luc Cooke left in the existing entropy estimation technique as a
way of side-stepping the whole argument.

Anyway, the bottom line is I don't consider "information-theoretic
arguments" as a very convincing reason to reject Cooke's proposal.