Hawkynt

KISS

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) combines four simple generators (two MWC, one congruential, one shift-register) using XOR and addition to create a high-quality PRNG with period approximately 2^123. Despite its simplicity, it passes rigorous statistical tests and is widely used in simulations.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Random Number Generators
Sub-category	Combined PRNG
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Intermediate
Inventor	George Marsaglia
Year	1999
Origin	🇺🇸 United States
Source	algorithms/random/kiss.js

Parameters

Parameter	Supported values
Seed sizes	1 byte (8 bits) to 16 bytes (128 bits)

Capabilities

Flag	Value
IsDeterministic	Yes
IsCryptographicallySecure	No

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

No vulnerabilities are recorded for this implementation.

Documentation

• Marsaglia’s Original Post: Random Numbers for C (1999)
• Programming Praxis: George Marsaglia’s Random Number Generators
• Wikipedia: KISS (algorithm)
• Reference Implementation (GitHub - librandom)

References

• Marsaglia RNG Collection
• Note: KISS - A bit too simple (2011 critique)

Test vectors

5 vectors ship with this algorithm and run in the test suite. Byte values are hexadecimal.

Vector 1 — Standard seed (z=362436069, w=521288629, jsr=123456789, jcong=380116160): First 5 outputs - Marsaglia default initialization

Field	Value
seed	159a55e51f123bb5075bcd1516a81cc0
outputSize	20
input	null
expected	2ddccfe02c3a35a87e6ee31aa73a60cebf9847a7

Vector 2 — Standard seed: After 1,000,000 iterations - Official Marsaglia test vector

Field	Value
seed	159a55e51f123bb5075bcd1516a81cc0
outputSize	4
skip	1000000
input	null
expected	6e00c98c

Vector 3 — Seed (1,1,1,1): First 8 outputs - minimal seed values

Field	Value
seed	00000001000000010000000100000001
outputSize	32
input	null
expected	90bca43528b06ddc9daed79ce6ccb3023aa7bd7087761af55cf255bb8d103532

Vector 4 — Seed (12345,65435,34221,12345): First 10 outputs - Marsaglia settable() test initialization

Field	Value
seed	000030390000ff9b000085ad00003039
outputSize	40
input	null
expected	8f714bb5eb2b61b7bfc72cbd4d222ed8 647480f7700e80db151bfa19454f142d 9e422d270d7dedd0

Vector 5 — Standard seed: Outputs 1000-1004 - verifies long-term state progression

Field	Value
seed	159a55e51f123bb5075bcd1516a81cc0
outputSize	20
skip	999
input	null
expected	0cf9f508c9dce4be94a7e42a0d2dcc5e6c0ee0c0

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