Abstract: The current document is directed to methods and systems that generate sequences of random numbers. Unlike many currently available random-number generators that continuously measures a physical apparatus or other signal source, the currently disclosed methods and systems employ nondeterministic phenomena that are computationally initiated and computationally accessed within a computer system. The nondeterministic phenomena are often a produced by multiple simultaneously executing, asynchronous threads or other computational entities, with the unpredictability arising from multiple different types and sources of nondeterministic behavior within the computer system. Unlike pseudorandom-number generators, statistics and metrics computed from sequences of random numbers produced by the currently disclosed random-number generators have values close to those expected for a random-selection process.

Abstract: The current document is directed to distributed-secure-storage systems, and processes carried out within the distributed-secure-storage systems, that provide for secure storage and retrieval of confidential and critical data, referred to as “secrets,” within distributed computer systems. The secret-storage systems partition an input secret into multiple secret shares and distribute the secret shares among multiple secret-share-storing node subsystems, without persistently storing the secret itself. An agent within a client device subsequently requests a secret share corresponding to a secret, or a share of data derived from the secret share, from each of the multiple secret-share-storing nodes. The multiple secret-share-storing nodes additionally cooperate to periodically alter the stored secret shares corresponding to a secret in a way that allows agents to recover the original secret, or derived data, from all or a portion of the altered secret shares or derived-data shares.