Health Tests v6.0.2

Important

Health tests are on by default, and should only be turned off in exceptional circumstances. Please contact us to discuss as required.

Quantum Origin products include health tests to guard against inadvertent misconfiguration or catastrophic failure of an input entropy source (the “WSR”).

Quantum Origin implements the Repetition Count Test and Adaptive Proportion Test as defined within NIST SP 800-90B. Health tests are performed on a startup and continuous basis.

There is no requirement for the user to modify or configure these tests, they are automatic.

In exceptional circumstances (e.g. specific testing) it can be desirable to disable the health tests. A user can add add a disabled key to their configuration file inside a new, or existing, health_tests block. disabled represents a YAML boolean.

health_tests:
    disabled: true

For clarity, the precise behavior is as follows:

  • If the health tests block is omitted (recommended), then health tests are always on.

  • If the health tests block is included, and disabled is set to false, then health tests are always on.

  • If the health tests block is included, and disabled is set to true, then health tests are always off.

This feature is supported in all adaptors.

Internal operational modes

Warning

The following is for information only. No action is required. They are solely for internal or exceptional use.

The inherent statistical nature of health tests mean that in long-term operation, health tests failures will occur even though there is no concern regarding the underlying entropy source.

For example, an unbiased entropy should, given long enough, generate exactly 0 when asked to generate a number between 0 and 2^32. Generating a zero does not mean an error has occurred, but may trigger health tests as defined by NIST.

To support this, Quantum Origin provides fine-grained customizability for each adaptor to specify behavior if and when a health test failures.

These are fully pre-configured for all adaptors and require no modification. As internal options, their interface is not guaranteed and may ignore or overwrite user options unless agreed with us prior.

In exceptional circumstances however, these can be modified to fit highly bespoke use-cases, please contact us for more information.

Health Test Configuration Options

Option

Description

retry_count

Health test retry count; must be a number or ‘inf’ for infinite.

retry_delay

Delay between retries in milliseconds; must be a non-negative integer.

retry_delay_max

Maximum delay between retries in milliseconds; must be a non-negative integer.

retry_multiplier

Multiplier for increasing delay between retries; must be a non-negative real number.