(this is me!)

This is a homepage for me, Joshua Hill. This is a site that I use to accumulate links to items that I wrote or find interesting.

You can find out about me by reading my résumé. If you're all social media-y, you can also view my Linked In Profile.

You can find out about my academic genealogy here. My Erdős Number is 4.

Papers

• A paper analyzing the security of the RADIUS authentication protocol. As an aside, this paper was stolen generously submitted for publication (after accidentally removing my name) by Peng Zhao, Xuewu Cao, and Ping Luo and published at the 2003 International Conference on Communication Technology.
• A short biography of Paul Erdős
• A defense of pure mathematics, a short biography of Georg Cantor, an introduction to his work with cardinality, and beyond.
• A Recurrence Relation for Pi
• ApEn Test Parameter Selection
• An analysis of the "Guess 2/3 of the Average" game
• A Description of the Number Field Sieve
• Calculations involving the minimum of independent of normal distributions
• The 7-11 Problem and its Solutions
• My advancement paper Weil Image Sums (and related problems).
• Counting Value Sets: Algorithm and Complexity (with Qi Cheng and Daqing Wan)
• My dissertation and defense slides On Calculating the Cardinality of the Value Set of a Polynomial (and some related problems).
• I co-authored extensive comments on NIST's SP800-90B. Related information is here.

I've translated (with help from Google Translate) Saburô Uchiyama's Sur le Nombre des Valeurs Distinctes d'un Polynôme à Coefficients dans un Corps Fini. My translation is The Number of Distinct Values of a Polynomial with Coefficients in a Finite Field

I've developed a few write ups for various classes that I've taught / TAed:

• Finite extensions of finite fields
• A quick outline of the Axiom of Choice.
• An outline of Euler's surprising series
• A proof of the divergence of the harmonic series
• Solving Cauchy-Euler equations by Substitution
• A Quick Note on Testing for Irreducibility over the Rational Numbers
• Every Element in a Finite Field is a Sum of Squares
• A Specification of the Pollard p-1 Algorithm
• The Time Complexity of the Effective Chinese Remainder Theorem

I have a few papers in (sometimes perpetual) draft:

• A paper on how the constants e and i are defined, along with some applications. e, i, e, i, oh!

Presentations

• A presentation that I gave in 1999 titled The Zen of Information Security.
• A presentation that I gave in 2000, titled Securing a Linux Box: It's mine, and You Can't Use It., which was in turn based on another presentation that I gave in 1998. As such, a fair bit of this is somewhat dated.
• A presentation I gave in 2002, titled Network Security: A Quick Overview.
• A presentation I gave in 2008, titled Cryptographic Foibles and Missteps.
• A presentation I gave in 2010 on Coppersmith's Theorem: Background, Generalizations and Applications.
• My advancement presentation in 2011 on Weil Image Sums.
• My ANTS X 2012 presentation on Counting Value Sets: Algorithm and Complexity
• A presentation that I gave in 2012 on Block Ciphers: Modes of Use, DES and AES
• A presentation that I gave in 2013 on Random Bit Generation: Theory and Practice
• A presentation that I gave in 2013 on The Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic RBG
• A presentation that I gave in 2013 that includes a summary of various computational approaches to the discrete logarithm problem, including two very recent approaches by Joux. Joux's Recent Index Calculus Results
• A presentation that I gave in 2013 outlining the analysis of substitution ciphers. Substitution Ciphers
• A presentation that I gave in 2014 that includes a summary of various averaging results produced by David Harvey, et al. This includes the best known point counting algorithm on general purpose arithmetic schemes. Harvey's Average Polynomial Time Algorithms
• A presentation that I gave in 2014 on use of LaTeX in mathematics publishing. LaTeX for Mathy Endeavors: (Somewhat) Advanced LaTeX (and Related Matters)
• A presentation that I gave in 2016 on An Approach for Entropy Assessment of Ring Oscillator-Based Noise Sources
• A presentation that I gave at the 2018 ICMC, titled Care and Feeding of the SP800-90B Statistical Tests
• A presentation that I gave at the 2019 ICMC, titled The IID Assumption and YOU!
• A presentation that I gave at the 2020 ICMC, titled "SP 800-90B Refinements: Validation Process, Estimator Confidence Intervals, and Assessment Stability"
• A presentation that I gave in 2020 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled "ICMC 2020: Summary of Entropy-Relevant Content" (Version 20201103 D9)
• A presentation that I gave in 2021 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled "What To Expect When You're Expecting (to Evaluate JEnt Against SP 800-90B)" (Version 20210904-1)
• A presentation that I gave at the 2021 ICMC, titled Some Approaches to Generate H_submitter for Periodically Sampled Ring Oscillators" (Version 20210904-1)
• A presentation that I gave in 2022 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled JEnt (MemOnly) and JEnt Analysis Approaches
• A presentation that I gave in 2023 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled Health Testing for Periodically Sampled Ring Oscillators (Version 20230602)
• A presentation that I gave in 2023 at VCEW 2023, titled JEnt MemOnly A Hardware-Based Ad Hoc Entropy Source
• A presentation that I gave in 2023 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled What To Expect When You're Expecting (to Assess the CPU Jitter Random Number Generator v2.2.0 Against SP 800-90B)
• A presentation that I gave in 2023 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled CMUF EWG Potpourri
• A presentation that I gave in 2024 over a few CMUF Entropy JEnt SWG meetings, titled CPU Jitter Heuristic Entropy Arguments
• A presentation that I gave in 2024 at the CMUF Entropy WG, titled EverythingSome of What You Always Wanted to Know About the APT (But Were Afraid to Ask). This was an extract of a prior presentation that I had prepared (but was overtaken by events) CMUF EWG Draft IG D.K Comments (Draft 9).

Software

Here are some programs that I find useful or generally neat:

• Solar Designer and the Openwall Project team pulled all his great tools together and made a hardened linux distribution called Owl.
• Fydor wrote a port scanner that you can use to audit your machine. It is called nmap.
• If you need to test the reasonableness of an PRNG, you can do large scale statistical testing on it. NIST has developed a series of tests documented in the excellent NIST SP800-22 (rev. 1a). NIST stopped support for the UNIX version of the test tool, but I've continued to support it here: sts.

I have a few other pieces of software that I've written over the years. Some of them are even still useful.

Hobbies

• Photography
• Motorcycling and wrenching

Elsewhere

Mail josh (dash) web (at) untruth.org with comments, questions, etc.