Randomness Testing of the Advanced Encryption Standard Finalist Candidates
Juan Soto, Bassham, Lawrence · 1999
. Mars, RC6, Rijndael, Serpent and Twofish were selected as finalists for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). To evaluate the finalists' suitability as random number generators, empirical statistical testing is commonly employed. Although it widely believed that these five algorithms are indeed random, randomness testing was conducted to show that there is empirical evidence supporting this belief. In this paper, NIST reports on the studies that were conducted on the finalists for the 192-bit key size and 256-bit key size. The results to date suggest that all five of the finalists appear to be random. 1 Introduction During the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Round 1 analysis period, NIST conducted randomness tests focusing strictly on the 128-bit keysize case and reported on each of the fifteen candidate algorithms being considered for the standard [3]. On August 9, 1999, five encryption algorithms (i.e., Mars, RC6, Rijndael, Serpent and Twofish) were selected as finali...