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

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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  • (Score: 1) by dak664 on Friday November 13 2015, @06:25PM

    by dak664 (2433) on Friday November 13 2015, @06:25PM (#262783)

    So you get a certified random sequence, how does that improve your security?

    You can xor it with your message, but need to save it to recover the message, and send it along with the message (or in advance by hand) which makes it no better than any other moderately complex one-time pad. Random images from my phone camera work just as well, and their pre-delivery does not generate the same suspicion of my future communications ;)

  • (Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Friday November 13 2015, @08:04PM

    by Ken_g6 (3706) on Friday November 13 2015, @08:04PM (#262809)