Generating Random and Pseudorandom Sequences in Mobile Devices

In our paper we study practical aspects of random and pseudorandom number generation in mobile environments. We examine and analyze several sources of randomness available in current mobile phones and other mobile devices at the application level. We identify good physical sources of randomness that are capable of generating data with high entropy in reasonable time and we investigate some relevant aspects (such as security, energy requirements, performance) of integrating selected pseudorandom number generators in the Symbian OS environment. The main contribution of this paper is the identification and analysis of randomness sources in mobile devices and a practical proposal for their post-processing, including a prototype implementation.