Re: new PRNG's

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2018-05-05 9:23 GMT+02:00 KHMan <keinhong@gmail.com>:
> On 5/5/2018 12:08 PM, Albert Chan wrote:
>>
>> Reading Vigna latest xoshiro paper (section 11, conclusion),
>> next version of Lua will use xoshiro256** for math.random.
>>
>> Is it true ?
>> Lua 5.4 ?
>>
>> http://vigna.di.unimi.it/ftp/papers/ScrambledLinear.pdf
>
>
> IMHO, math.random is similar in purpose to C standard library's random
> function. It's pseudo-random, that's about it. It does not promise any
> quality specifications.
>
> Are there serious flaws that disqualifies the current implementation from
> this purpose?
>
> Is there a requirement for cryptographic-quality randomness? Is that a good
> idea? For what applications? If for crypto/security, is it normal for a base
> programming language library to embrace such capabilities? Shouldn't we use
> well-established libraries instead? If we crunch crypto in pure Lua,
> wouldn't a timing attack be easy?
>
> I just don't see the point of this topic going on and on and on.

+1.

A language whose standard math library has been stripped of functions
available on any scientific calculator (viz. asinh, acosh, atanh) dare
make no pretence of up-to-the minute standards for mathematical
software.