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Comment by drinchev | Hacker News Reader

How dangerous this prediction can be? I can't stop thinking of java-backended real money, poorly written, gaming websites.

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It has happened before!

See http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.ph... for a very detailed explanation of how one figured out all the cards in Texas hold-em.

It's well known. If someone is doing anything with real money, and isn't doing something more secure than this, they've already been hacked, are already out of business, and are already not allowed to write code that deals with real money.

This is a convenient but flawed argument that assumes an equilibrium. Hacking is often (mostly?) about vulnerabilities that change over time.

This has happened in the past. Interesting read:

http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.ph...

If one were to use such tactics to make money - would that be considered "hacking" and be illegal?

Real random numbers are useless because everything follow some distribution. Actually random generators in programming languages should be called pseudorandom to avoid confusions.

By that logic nothing should ever be called random (in any context). There are things we can measure but don't understand the source of the entropy, but they aren't random we just haven't figured out the source yet. Most things we consider random are quantifiable and predictable with enough data (be it nature or computers).

Plus there are several definitions of the term "random" (English) which are in-line with the programming usage such as "random: a haphazard course."

I thought quantum processes were truly random.

As far as we know. That isn't the same thing as "it is".

If you assume that quantum processes are truly random, there are a bunch of ways for a computer to generate truly random noise - the easiest class being shot noise (connect a computer to a good camera in an almost pitch-black enclosure, or send a small current through a diode), but there are others.

> Real random numbers are useless because everything follow some distribution.

First, real random numbers are quite valuable. Second, yes, all numerical sequences follow a distribution, but one of those distributions is called the "normal distribution", and I think you may be able to guess what that refers to.

> Actually random generators in programming languages should be called pseudorandom to avoid confusions.

It would have been useful to explain the difference between the terms random and pseudorandom. "Pseudorandom" doesn't necessarily mean easily predictable or flawed, it means the sequence results from a deterministic algorithm and can be recreated exactly by restarting the generator with the same seed value.

Why is the normal distribution important here? (In programming, people often start from the uniform distribution, don't they?)

> Why is the normal distribution important here?

There may be a terminological confusion at work here. A normal or uniform number shows no internal pattern:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number

Quote: "In mathematics, a normal number is a real number whose infinite sequence of digits in every base b[1] is distributed uniformly in the sense that each of the b digit values has the same natural density 1/b, also all possible b^2 pairs of digits are equally likely with density b^−2, all b^3 triplets of digits equally likely with density b^−3, etc."

There are also pseudorandom generators whose purpose it is to generate results that agree with a normal or Gaussian distribution, for particular purposes.

http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Gaussian.html

Quote: "This note is about the topic of generating Gaussian pseudo-random numbers given a source of uniform pseudo-random numbers."

The problem here is that a normal number shows a uniform distribution of its digits among the possible values, and the term normal distribution is sometimes used to describe this outcome.

> In programming, people often start from the uniform distribution, don't they?

Yes, and as set out above, this starting point may be described in a confusing way.

I have never seen the term normal distribution used in connection with anything but the Gaussian normal distribution. Especially not in connection with normal numbers. Can you point to some examples of people using this sense?

Those likely won't be vulnerable even if they implemented their site using the insecure random function. The reason why this works is that you're the only consumer of Java-randomness, as you add additional consumers it becomes infinitely more difficult.

Consumers also don't need to be users, AI players and cards dealt will also consume randomness. You would also need to know the mapping from the random output into the game (e.g. in card games are there multiple decks each assigned 1 value of entropy? 2 decks, 3 decks, etc? Plus any mappings or conversions will make this impossible (as you wouldn't know the real output of the random number generator)).

Ultimately it will likely work pretty reliably locally, but as soon as you stick it on a web service then all bets are off.

This more probable than you think. Java code is likely to use Collections.shuffle(). That method uses internal Random which is used only for shuffling. Shuffling is unlikely to be used for other purposes than shuffling cards. There isn't that many ways to shuffle them either.

shuffle does allow specifying a j.u.Random as second parameter. If you don't use SecureRandom when you have to, it's your own fall.

I worked for 6 years in a company which makes online (gambling) games. I can tell you that anyone who even thinks of using Collections.shuffle() for shuffling cards in production code is an amateur.

In the event tptacek doesn't show up to explain how awfully wrong this is, I'll do my best to fill in.

An attacker who can predict your PRNG and guess a seeded value knows a potentially infinite number of future random numbers. Now all he needs to do is guess what random numbers, from a very small pool of possible numbers, will show up at what time. Devs often code assuming that PRNG numbers aren't predictable at all, so compromising your RNG is like setting your password to "hunter2" in a situation where nobody thinks about limiting the number of guesses.

Such attacks were famously used to steal a lot of money on PlanetPoker, one of the first poker websites. RNG attacks are also deadly in encryption, where it's reasonable for an attacker to be able to make millions of guesses from his laptop computer.

You'd have more luck with fixed-odds games. The APIs for those tend to expose the results of the RNG in ways that are fairly easy to piece together. Some of the API responses will literally tell you enough to know "we picked a random number between 0 and x, and the result was y".

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