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Big Bang Left Us with a Perfect Random Number Generator

posted by martyb on Friday November 13 2015, @01:24PM   
from the entropy-FTW dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Want a FIPS 140-2 RNG? Look at the universe. The cosmic background radiation bathes Earth in enough random numbers to encrypt everything forever. Using the cosmic background radiation – the "echo of the Big Bang" – as a random number generation isn't a new idea, but a couple of scientists have run the slide-rule over measurements of the CMB power spectrum and reckon it offers a random number space big enough to beat any current computer.

Not in terms of protecting messages against any current decryption possibility: the CMB's power spectrum offers a key space "too large for the encryption/decryption capacities of present computer systems". A straightforward terrestrial radio telescope, this Arxiv paper states, should be good enough to make "astrophysical entropy sources accessible on comparatively modest budgets".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/12/big_bang_left_us_with_a_perfect_random_number_generator/

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Original Submission

• Manipulation? Manipulation? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @02:34PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @02:34PM (#262655)

  Would it be possible for a space agency to place a satellite at a strategic point above the telescope and reduce the randomness by adding its own (non-random) radiation? A local source of randomness has the advantage that, as far as we know, it can only be manipulated locally.

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• Re:Manipulation? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:00PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:00PM (#262665)

  No.

  Parent