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dakami | 9 years ago

Ah, there you go. Repro code:

#/usr/bin/python

from random import *

count=0

def get_bit():

   global count

   count+=1

   if (count%2)==0:

      return random()<0.9

   else:

      return False
def get_fair_bit():

   while 1:

      a=get_bit()

      b=get_bit()

      if a!=b: return a
while 1:

   print get_fair_bit()
I'm wondering how often this one shows up the field -- my interest here comes from the ~1% failure rate of RSA keys in the field because manufacturers actually will not install hardware RNG or externally inject key material. Field vulnerability trumps religion. It looks like you need a really stateful vuln -- something akin to "a 1 is always followed by a 0 due to power drain" wouldn't be enough because the number of 0's is still acceptably unbound.

I know there are debiasers that look at statistics across a group. Wonder what else is out there.

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