Randomness
From Maze
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(→Randomness in Contemporary Computing) | (→Randomness in Contemporary Computing) | ||
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=== Randomness in Contemporary Computing === | === Randomness in Contemporary Computing === | ||
| − | Randomness is not always visible, but is often used in everyday computing tasks. | + | Randomness is not always visible to the everyday user of computers, but is often used in ordinary computing tasks. Randomness plays an essential role in the security and networking systems of networked computers, for instance. |
| − | [Generating keys and passwords.] | + | When a computer needs to generate a new password for a user, a URL that will let someone in to reset a password, or a CAPTCHA that will help to keep automated spammers out and allow access to legitimate users, randomness is employed. A regular password would allow for a password, URL, or distorted word that could be guessed. But randomness also plays a role behind the scenes of protocols such as SSH (Secure Shell) and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Random values are used in a few ways, including the generation of keys for encryption and to pad out the rest of a block when the plaintext message is too short to complete it. Without randomness, it wouldn't be possible to complete a secure credit card transaction on the Web, which is protected by an SSL connection. In fact, early versions of SSL as implemented in the Netscape browser suffered from being insufficiently random. The seeds for random number generation were the the current time, the process ID, and the parent process ID, which left the browser vulnerable to attack. The solution was better randomness. |
| − | |||
| − | [CAPTCHA generation.] | ||
[Random choice of wait time during exponential backoff for Ethernet.] | [Random choice of wait time during exponential backoff for Ethernet.] | ||
[Hashing? Simulation? Fault tolerance?] | [Hashing? Simulation? Fault tolerance?] | ||
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| + | [Games (of chance)] | ||
=== The C64 and the RND Function === | === The C64 and the RND Function === | ||
