Generating Secure Random Numbers in R

The rand_bytes function binds to RAND_bytes in OpenSSL to generate cryptographically strong pseudo-random bytes. See the OpenSSL documentation for what this means.

rnd <- rand_bytes(10)
print(rnd)
 [1] d8 1a dc 24 14 75 82 7e e5 d8

Bytes are 8 bit and hence can have 2^8 = 256 possible values.

as.numeric(rnd)
 [1] 216  26 220  36  20 117 130 126 229 216

Each random byte can be decomposed into 8 random bits (booleans)

x <- rand_bytes(1)
as.logical(rawToBits(x))
[1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE

Secure Random Numbers

rand_num is a simple (2 lines) wrapper to rand_bytes to generate random numbers (doubles) between 0 and 1.

rand_num(10)
 [1] 0.4093016 0.6469595 0.7696102 0.6055394 0.3985970 0.7130491 0.6069492
 [8] 0.3375967 0.9527642 0.5948772

To map random draws from [0,1] into a probability density, we can use a Cumulative Distribution Function. For example we can combine qnorm and rand_num to simulate rnorm:

# Secure rnorm
x <- qnorm(rand_num(1000), mean = 100, sd = 15)
hist(x)

Same for discrete distributions:

# Secure rbinom
y <- qbinom(rand_num(1000), size = 20, prob = 0.1)
hist(y, breaks = -.5:(max(y)+1))