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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-pull-numbers-from-a-hat dept.

Researchers in China have developed a way to improve the reliability and security of machines that use quantum phenomena to generate random numbers. This is crucial to the development of other related technologies, such as secure quantum communication and computer simulations used in weather forecasts.

[...] "The output of [...] pseudorandom number generators is in principle predictable," said Xiongfeng Ma, an information scientist from Beijing's Tsinghua University, who was a part of the Chinese group. "They are good enough for most applications like simulations, but not for high security crypto systems."

[...] "Even if you have a very good [quantum] random number generator, there will still be some residual bias, so there needs to be a way to test and clean the data," said Juan Carlos Garcia-Escartin, a telecommunication scientist from University of Valladolid in Spain.

This need for post-measurement processing exposes the system to potential hacking. Ma and his team have developed a way to detect if a system is compromised. The basic concept is pretty simple -- they use the random source to trigger random testing of the data, kind of like pop-quizzes for a class of students.

This involves repeatedly shuffling and dividing the output numbers into four random groups, then testing them and crosschecking their results for anomalies. If the numbers are truly random and unbiased, any manipulation by an outsider would show up in these tests. Once this testing method is implemented, then even an untrusted quantum random number generator can still be used without the fear of compromising the level of randomness generated.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday February 14 2017, @07:32PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @07:32PM (#467075) Journal

    I like the web cam focused on a lantern flame method, which is also quantum in nature, but is easier to set up at home. You do need to post-process the signal to remove constants, though, and to average multiple pixels.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:44PM (#467113)
    You'd do better trying to amplify shot noise from the webcam CCDs. The CCDs obviously work using the photoelectric effect, which is very much a quantum mechanical phenomenon.