Computers Aren't Designed to be Random
Posted on 11/24/2006 11:58 am in Computers
From Computers are Lousy Random Number Generators:
The world is random. Computers aren't. Randomness is really, really hard for computers. It's important to understand the ramifications of this big divide between the analog and digital world, otherwise you're likely to make the same rookie mistakes Netscape did.
The article provides a decent explanation of why random numbers are important for cryptography and why computers aren't any good at it. The biggest problem with using a computer as a random number generator is that they are designed for the opposite. They are made to provide the consistent results. To get true randomness, you have to "reach outside the computer".
