Generating borderline test samples for randomness testers via intelligent optimization and evolutionary algorithms

Ensuring information security heavily relies on high-quality random sequences for encryption keys. Physical entropy sources, despite their use in generating true random sequences, are susceptible to environmental disturbances, necessitating real-time randomness testing to maintain high entropy. However, existing methods for generating test data for real-time randomness testers face significant challenges, including producing sequences that fail to meet specific randomness criteria, constructing borderline sequences with slight non-randomness, and addressing the difficulty of simultaneously violating multiple randomness criteria. This paper introduces a dynamic test data generation framework designed to address these challenges. The framework leverages evolutionary algorithm (EA) to transform the generation of borderline sequences into a multi-constrained optimization problem, where a large language model (LLM) acts as a dynamic parameter adjuster. By analyzing evolutionary trends in population statistics and interacting with evolutionary dynamics through a game-theoretic mechanism, the LLM adaptively adjusts scaling factors and weight coefficients, mitigating the curse of dimensionality in multi-objective optimization and enabling real-time parameter tuning. The experimental results also highlight the high quality of the generated sequences: our approach can generate borderline test data that slightly fail to satisfy the target randomness criteria, yet exhibit statistical properties very similar to those of high-entropy sources under standard test suites. These borderline sequences are fault-detectable and provide challenging, realistic test inputs for classical statistical-test-based real-time randomness testers.

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Publication Details

Journal
Scientific Reports
Published
2026-02-04
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38020-w
Primary Topic
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Generating borderline test samples for randomness testers via intelligent optimization and evolutionary algorithms

Bin Zhang, Zheng Wang, Chenglong Li, Peng Gao
Scientific Reports
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
article

Generating borderline test samples for randomness testers via intelligent optimization and evolutionary algorithms

Bin Zhang, Zheng Wang, Chenglong Li, Peng Gao
article en

Abstract

Ensuring information security heavily relies on high-quality random sequences for encryption keys. Physical entropy sources, despite their use in generating true random sequences, are susceptible to environmental disturbances, necessitating real-time randomness testing to maintain high entropy. However, existing methods for generating test data for real-time randomness testers face significant challenges, including producing sequences that fail to meet specific randomness criteria, constructing borderline sequences with slight non-randomness, and addressing the difficulty of simultaneously violating multiple randomness criteria. This paper introduces a dynamic test data generation framework designed to address these challenges. The framework leverages evolutionary algorithm (EA) to transform the generation of borderline sequences into a multi-constrained optimization problem, where a large language model (LLM) acts as a dynamic parameter adjuster. By analyzing evolutionary trends in population statistics and interacting with evolutionary dynamics through a game-theoretic mechanism, the LLM adaptively adjusts scaling factors and weight coefficients, mitigating the curse of dimensionality in multi-objective optimization and enabling real-time parameter tuning. The experimental results also highlight the high quality of the generated sequences: our approach can generate borderline test data that slightly fail to satisfy the target randomness criteria, yet exhibit statistical properties very similar to those of high-entropy sources under standard test suites. These borderline sequences are fault-detectable and provide challenging, realistic test inputs for classical statistical-test-based real-time randomness testers.

Scientific ReportsVol. 16(1)
PLA Information Engineering University (CN), King Center (US), Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CN), Tsinghua University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 73%
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
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