On the unbearable lightness of FIPS 140-2 randomness tests
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 12 - Engineering
- Output identifier
- 38097088
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1109/TIFS.2020.2988505
- Title of journal
- IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 1
- Volume
- 0
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 1556-6021
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This paper provides a novel and impactful analysis of FIPS 140-2 tests, their flaws, and their current usage as an implied mark of 'cryptographic randomness' . The FIPS 140-2 test battery remains a recommended self-test suite for end-users, who may wish to verify the quality of RNG output. This work highlights serious issues in end-user RNG validation: current advice around lightweight RNG testing is out of date and in many cases will not identify biases (which may be introduced by a malicious actor to compromise output for further attacks). Lightweight, simple tests which overcome this issue are also described.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
