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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/
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Friday November 13 2015, @03:00PM
I have a cheap $3.00 webcam aimed out the window.
The low bits of each pixel are themselves indistinguishable from pure white noise according to all the NIST tests available. However, I just take the video frames and run them through a hash matrix. Each hashing function instance contributes to one block of a randomness pool. If I need more randomness faster than the pool, I can distribute the frame pixels among the hash buckets more scarcely or hook another webcam up. A $20 dollar one that's got 1024 times more pixels per second.
On my robotics projects that have machine learning and thus a need for really good random numbers, I just use a reverse bias diode. There you go. Harnessing "The Big Bang" via quantum randomness. For less than a dollar.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday November 13 2015, @03:19PM
I used to take the low bits of a soundcard's disconnected line-in.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 13 2015, @03:57PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday November 13 2015, @09:00PM
But I can't find a Bambleweeny 57 Submeson Brain. Do you know where I could get one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday November 13 2015, @04:19PM
Yeah...I'm not a cryptographer but this problem seems solved, practically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @05:18PM
Well, first off they're not trying to "sell" anything. Their paper is about how random the CMB is.
Secondly, what do you mean you run your frames through a hash matrix? Are you taking a single frame and hashing that, or are you doing some sort of time-series analysis of individual pixels? In either case, I don't think it is as random as you think it is. I don't doubt that it is good enough for what you want, but I think you're misleading yourself on how truly random it is. You can only exploit the entropy that you're passing to the hash, otherwise you won't need to pass the hash anything, and the point of their paper is that the CMB is sufficiently random for any current use case.