The Relevance of Statistical Tests in Cryptography

The evaluation of a cryptographic primitive (such as a block/stream cipher algorithm or pseudorandom bit generator) involves statistical testing meant to identify nonrandom behavior that can be exploited by cryptanalyzing the primitive. This article presents statistical requirements for validating the security of cryptographic primitives. Because validation by statistical methods is prone to errors due to the samples used in testing, we must look at statistical testing assumptions, types of errors, and sample construction and requirements.