Blum Blum Shub

Blum Blum Shub (B.B.S.) is a pseudorandom number generator proposed in 1986 by Lenore Blum, Manuel Blum and Michael Shub[1] that is derived from Michael O. Rabin's one-way function.

Blum Blum Shub takes the form

,

where M = pq is the product of two large primes p and q. At each step of the algorithm, some output is derived from xn+1; the output is commonly either the bit parity of xn+1 or one or more of the least significant bits of xn+1.

The seed x0 should be an integer that is co-prime to M (i.e. p and q are not factors of x0) and not 1 or 0.

The two primes, p and q, should both be congruent to 3 (mod 4) (this guarantees that each quadratic residue has one square root which is also a quadratic residue), and should be safe primes with a small gcd((p-3)/2, (q-3)/2) (this makes the cycle length large).

An interesting characteristic of the Blum Blum Shub generator is the possibility to calculate any xi value directly (via Euler's theorem):

,

where is the Carmichael function. (Here we have ).

  1. ^ Blum, Blum & Shub 1986, pp. 364–383.