Saint Dual_EC_DRBG, of Suspicious Randomness

Patron of random number generators with mysterious constants, standards written in good company, and suspicious cryptographers.

Life

Standardised by NIST in 2006, the Dual_EC_DRBG generator was slow, and as early as 2007 Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson warned that whoever knew the relation between its points P and Q could predict its output. In 2013 the Snowden documents suggested the NSA had a hand in it, and it turned out to be the default generator in RSA's BSAFE library. NIST withdrew it from its standards soon after.

Prayer

O Saint Dual_EC_DRBG, who rolls the dice already knowing the result, deliver us from constants whose origin nobody explains. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by using a modern generator such as HMAC_DRBG or CTR_DRBG and asking, before every constant, "who chose this?".