Shuffling at sites

[Janis N.]

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I may be clueless about software development, but I am an expert in determining breaches in security and procedures, including detemining how perpetrators were enabled.

[/ QUOTE ]What you wrote above doesn't really match and makes no sense. You cannot be an expert in determining how breaches in software happened if you are indeed clueless about software development.

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Where exactly did they claim to be an expert in software breaches?

[/ QUOTE ]When he discussed rigging the next card to come it would likely be done in software wouldn't you think?

My point being is that being an expert "in determining breaches in security and procedures" (whatever that means) is pretty irrelevant to ones competence in saying that JIT shuffling is less safe than shuffling once before each hand.

[Henry17]

If I wanted a Wiki entry I would have gone to Wiki. I wanted you to explain it in your own words.

[Janis N.]

aerobatic, I read some of what you wrote and I believe now you actually have at least some clue of what you are talking about. My apologies for thinking to the contrary previously.

[aerobatic]

this one's also interesting...

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5732138.html

[gsyme]

I've taken courses in quantum mechanics and actually carried out an experiment to analyze the factors affecting Johnson-Nyquist noise through a resistor.

Thermal noise is COMPLETELY random. Furthermore, physicists understand what makes it random. It's the electrical equivalent of Brownian motion. There is not even a theoretical way to predict it.

Aerobatic is paranoid delusional and doesn't understand what he's talking about.

[gsyme]

Also, there is absolutely no difference between one random shuffle and another. If two 100% random shuffles differed in some measurable way, then they wouldn't be 100% random, would they?

[aerobatic]

gsyme -

ok.. lets say i was being over paranoid about the assumed quality of the thermal noise. i'll come down on that argument and agree that i was overegging that bit - in part to play devil's advocate.. after reading a lot more from you guys and the web, im now happy that thermal noise can be a good source of entropy.

but.. lets think about the implementation we're discussing here for a minute... if the thermal noise that pokerstars was using was guaranteed to be completely random then there'd be no point in hashing it with the mousemovement data and other user input to make it somehow EVEN MORE random, dont you agree with that logic? so there must be some reason why theyre doing that that means they dont entirely trust the thermal noise entropy on its own.

they also say on their web site that they utilise a PRNG as well.. so its not clear why they'd do that unless they were somehow not getting the results (performance? quality? unclear what) out of their thermal noise and mousemovements generators. dont you agree that there must be some reason why they do that, that they havnt explained?

im not being paranoid, im just being inquisitive and playing devil's advocate.

the whole thrust of my posts, which no one seems to discuss or question, is that a high quality prng thats well implemented is going to shuffle cards extremely well and as well as a claimed truly random source.. and that no one has visibility into the cards that are shuffled, with either method. thus you shouldnt somehow trust a trng any more than a prng when it comes to a shuffled deck. it makes not the slightest bit of difference to the shuffled deck or the end users who are playing cards wth that deck.

[aerobatic]

by the way guys.. this article is excellent and puts many of the issues out in the open in a very easy to read and clear way. i learned a lot from this article.

i also suspect that the rng they are discussing is the one that pokerstars uses.


http://www.cryptography.com/resource...s/IntelRNG.pdf

[Freyalise]

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by the way guys.. this article is excellent and puts many of the issues out in the open in a very easy to read and clear way. i learned a lot from this article.

i also suspect that the rng they are discussing is the one that pokerstars uses.


http://www.cryptography.com/resource...s/IntelRNG.pdf

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Indeed it is.

That page is linked at the bottom of the PokerStars webpage regarding our shuffle:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/features/security/

[notreallymyname]

Although a PRNG is in practice just as safe, a large number of gamblers are absolutely convinced that the shuffle is rigged and need every assurance you can offer them. The use of data from client machines is for the same reason.