Modifications of Knuth Randomness Tests for Integer and Binary Sequences

Abstract

Generating random numbers and random sequences that are in-distinguishable from truly random sequences is an important task for cryptog-raphy. To measure the randomness, statistical randomness tests are applied tothe generated numbers and sequences. Knuth test suite is the one of the .rststatistical randomness suites. This suite, however, is mostly for real numbersequences and the parameters of the tests are not given explicitly.In this work, we review the tests in Knuth Test Suite. We give test para-meters in order for the tests to be applicable to integer and binary sequencesand make suggestions on the choice of these parameters. We clarify how theprobabilities used in the tests are calculated according to the parameters andprovide formulas to calculate the probabilities. Also, some tests, like Per-mutation Test and Max-of-t-test, are modi.ed so that the test can be usedto test integer sequences. Finally, we apply the suite on some widely usedcryptographic random number sources and present the results.