The next KE Hub online Triage Workshop will be presented by REAMC:
ACORN-QRE: A practical method of generating secure one-time pads for use in encryption
The Additive Congruential Random Number (ACORN) generator gives rise to sequences with long period approximating to uniformity in up to k dimensions (for any value of k). This has been demonstrated both through mathematical analysis and empirical testing.
ACORN-QRE (Wikramaratna, REAMC Report-007, 2023, https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1080) is a straightforward modification which avoids the linearity of ACORN, while preserving the uniformity. This can generate one-time pads that are demonstrably resistant to attack by current computers or by future computing developments (including quantum). The pads, which can use any alphabet, work with a Vernam-type cypher to securely encrypt both files and communications.
We are interested in obtaining an independent view of our existing analysis of the ACORN-QRE method, which might hopefully lead to confirmation (alternatively to refinement or improvement, or in the worst case to rejection) of existing mathematical analysis and results concerning the security of the method. Our starting point, and primary focus, is the security analysis contained in REAMC Report-007.
We would also be interested in a critique of the results of empirical testing of the underlying ACORN algorithm, such as have been reported in REAMC Report-008 (June 2025). We believe that there may be merit in undertaking a more rigorous statistical analysis of the extensive results we have obtained using TestU01 (which is a standard method for testing the quality of uniformly distributed pseudo-random numbers) applied to ACORN generators with a very wide range of different initialisations.
Both the reports mentioned can be found on the publications page of the REAMC Limited web-site, www.reamc-limited.com/publications.
The ACORN-QRE algorithm is patented in UK (GB2591467) and USA (US11,831,751B2); the patents are owned by REAMC Limited.
