Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Lava Lamps, Chaos, and Encryption

Now Noll is working with Cooper on an improved RNG called LavaRnd (which debuted in May at www.lavarnd.org). The new process replaces the lava lamps with a more Zen-like source of entropy: a webcam with its lens cap on. The chaotic thermal "noise" emitted by the webcam is digitized and put through a hash algorithm that churns the number set, stripping unwanted sections of predictability. The result is a cryptographically strong sequence of numbers, ready for use in the real world. And because the new service is open source, patent-free, and license-free, anyone will be able to cheaply build and operate a LavaRnd server and receive the precious commodity free of charge - a random act of kindness.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/random.html

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