Various Random things (Was: Java 8 RFC 7189139: BigInteger's staticRandom field can be a source of bottlenecks)

[Brian Burkhalter]

So it looks like there are two decisions to be made on this topic:

On Sep 3, 2013, at 1:21 AM, Paul Sandoz wrote:

>>> add the following method to BigInteger
>>> public boolean isProbablePrime(int certainty, Random end) ,
>>> which allows primality testing with arbitrary Random objects.
>>> In many cases, using a well seeded normal Random object will work
>>> just fine, and this will give users the ability to provide their own
>>> Random objects
>> 
>> This sounds like a very good solution to me.  That way someone can decide whether they want to take the hit with SecureRandom, or if Random is good enough.
>> 
> 
> Yes.

1) Add BigInteger.isProbablePrime(int certainty, Random rnd) {}

>> So offhand, I wouldn't commit to saying if SecureRandom is necessary or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
>> 
> 
> My intuition is that the new algorithm for TLR might be sufficient as input to this Monte-Carlo algorithm, but i don't have any hard empirical data.

2) Replace SR with TLR as the default Random in BigInteger.passesMillerRabin(int iterations, Random rnd) {}.

Any further comments from those adept at this topic?

Brian