Physicist Uses Laser Light As Fast, True-Random Number Generator 326
MrKevvy writes
"An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography: 'Sussman's Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second. His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes. ... It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. ... What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable. Sussman's lab can measure the pulses of laser light that emerge from this mysterious transformation, and the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is. Those measurements are his random numbers.'"
Re:"Truly random numbers" (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the point though--just because we don't have an explanation doesn't make it random--it may be apparently random, but that irks me in the same way that people drop off the "known-" or "observable-" in front of "universe".
Also "securely random" implies an application for which these "apparently random" numbers are "good enough"...
Simtec "Entropy Key" also does quantum RNG (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back, the Simtec Entropy Key [entropykey.co.uk] was making the rounds among Debian Devs, and claims to be exploiting quantum effects in the P-N junctions to be a true RNG.
They seem serious and I tend to trust paranoid Debian developers' opinions [entropykey.co.uk], but ultimately I don't have enough knowledge myself to make a confident judgment call. I'd be curious about more opinions.
Genuinely random? (Score:4, Interesting)
C64 (Score:4, Interesting)
The Commodore 64 could produce random numbers by sampling the white noise generator in the SID audio chip. They probably weren't as random as shining a laser through the diamond but I wonder if the difference is enough to matter...
Re:Simtec "Entropy Key" also does quantum RNG (Score:5, Interesting)
claims to be exploiting quantum effects in the P-N junctions to be a true RNG
Thats a wee bit of the wordy mumbo jumbo, like talking about the "maxwellian equation emitter controlled by polarization rotation human interface unit" I'm using to read this, instead of calling it a freaking monitor. Just call it a zener diode and be done with it. The Zener story is bizarre and this doesn't help. Clarence M. Zener came up with the theory for his diodes in the 30s, although they couldn't be built until the 50s when they thought it would be cool to name the diode after him, or maybe his physics equation, or both. Strange but true fact is that a "zener" diode operating below 5 volts uses the actual physics Zener effect and a "zener" diode operating above 5 volts uses the physics avalanche effect, which the Entropy Key claims to use.
Note that USB does not provide more than 5 volts and a reasonable current limiter means its gonna be operating well into zener-land.
So, A dude named Zener, invented Zener physics, leading to the theory of zener diodes, then someone else built one 20 years later and named it after him, and the key markets itself as using the closely related avalanche effect, but because only 5 volts is available without some sort of voltage multiplier or boost switching regulator, its probably actually using the low voltage Zener effect, regardless of the effect, devices using avalanche or zener effect are always marketed as zener diodes commercially, so I'm sure there is a Zener on the board. Which doesn't matter in the end, because zener noise is just as good as avalanche noise for crypto, as far as I know. In fact zener is probably better, less temperature dependence. Talk about abuse of proper nouns and trademarks... kinda like my Xerox machine at home was manufactured by Brother.
This stuff is all from memory, I hope I didn't swap Zener and Avalanche effects, although either way its still a heck of a story.
Re:"Truly random numbers" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Truly random numbers" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And the numbers are... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's nonsense.
If a pick a truly random number from a set that includes 9, then there is a nonzero chance that it will be nine. If I then pick another number from that same set, there is an equal nonzero chance of it being 9. If I pick N numbers from that set, then the probability of them all being 9 is X^N, where X is my nonzero chance. Any nonzero number raised to any power will still be nonzero. Therefore there is a nonzero chance that you can generate a random list of numbers and have them all be 9.
I suppose you could get extremely pedantic and say that the question is the probability of a list of 9s being random (as opposed to the probability of a random list containing all 9s), and then make the claim that there is no way to get a completely random list of numbers, but otherwise I don't see how you can ever look at a list of numbers and say with certainty that it wasn't randomly generated.
Re:"Truly random numbers" (Score:5, Interesting)
So, it's random as far as Aspect can tell.
We'll get true randomness as soon as that last digit for pi is discovered.
There is no random. There is only random enough.
Re:"Truly random numbers" (Score:5, Interesting)
As a card-carrying atheist I don't believe in a space-genie either. When things one generally holds to be true are not currently provable with the knowledge one (we as humanity) has, that does not make them invalid nor meaningless. Nor does it require a space-genie. One is free to hold beliefs, and even to actively pursue their validation or invalidation. Einstein did this, in this very realm we are discussing. As I posted in another part of this thread, science has frequently believed "this is as deep as it goes!" only to be proven incorrect later on. I for one am not arrogant enough to believe that there cannot be some underlying deterministic cause for the phenomena we currently recognize as "random". And I would not respect the scientist who holds otherwise--but I would respect the scientist that believes there can exist phenomena without underlying deterministic cause.
Re:Finally a reason for socially inept people to b (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, if we want to talk about fun hardware:
A DX2 66 486 with 64MB RAM, two 1GB SCSI disks and a CDROM with a 4MB VRAM card. But, that was just the desktop machine. It only clocked in at about $8K (work really sprung for that one) Then there was the decked out Indigo 2. Don't recall the RAM, but the MIPS 4400 upgrade was around 8K alone, and that was small potatoes compared to the $25K 256 layer Z-buffer video card that was added in. That's right - $25K for a video card that today is probably outpaced by pretty much anything you pull out of the recycling pile. And it was the low price of $25K because we bought 2 in a bundle with the upgrades. Originally they went for $38K.
Of course, all of those prices are totally blown away by the $8K 430MB WORM drive we purchased. To truly get how expensively stupid this purchase was, you have to understand how WORM drives operate. They basically had their own controller internally that worked with the internal hardware to position the write/read head as you progressed along the spiral. The problem was, there was no segmentation of the disk, no error correction, no guide tracks, or anything else. So, the entire process was based on the head placement mechanism being in the right place at the right point of the spin to write/read the data. The problem was, these parts would wear, so a disk was good across about 250-400 read-write cycles of the drive. Read that again - the drive could only be used less than 250 times reliably between the writing of a disk and the current reading. After 250, it got dicey, after 400, you could no longer read it. Oh, and just to compare it to today's BD disks, a WORM disk at the time sold for roughly $100 a piece in lots of 100.
Re:Finally a reason for socially inept people to b (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of tools have diamond blades.
Huh? +4 informative? I've been absent from /. for a good 5 years, but in my day that comment would have looked like
A [wikipedia.org] lot [precisiondiamondinc.com] of [diamondbladeselect.com] tools [dixiediamond.com] have [diamondtoolstore.com] diamond [amazon.com] blades. [diamondtoolsupply.com]