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It was not hard for us to get approval to buy the Lava Lite lamps. Our bosses were very supportive in signing the purchase orders to buy the lamps. All it took was presenting a cool idea (lavarand) to cool bosses (David Watson and later Mel Pleasant). :-)

Some have asked about the relationship between the classic SGI lavarand and the current LavaRnd project:

• One of the members of the SGI classic lavarand team (me) is also on the current LavaRnd team
• As a nod to history, we do maintain a pair of lamps in view of the live image our entropy source.
• The difference between the old SGI classic lavarand and the new LavaRnd may be viewed here

It was not hard for us to get approval to buy the Lava Lite lamps. Our bosses were very supportive in signing the purchase orders to buy the lamps. All it took was presenting a cool idea (lavarand) to cool bosses (David Watson and later Mel Pleasant). :-)

Some have asked about the relationship between the classic SGI lavarand and the current LavaRnd project:

• One of the members of the SGI classic lavarand team (me) is also on the current LavaRnd team
• As a nod to history, we do maintain a pair of lamps in view of the live image our entropy source.
• The difference between the old SGI classic lavarand and the new LavaRnd may be viewed here

The differences are listed here.

A better one is here where Lava lamps are used to generate true random bits.

Too bad the website for it appears to be off line. SGI used to be cool, too...

Wasn't there a link on slashdot a while back about a guy who built a crypto system using lava lamps as the (truly random) seed

It was the Silicon Graphics (SGI) Lavarand implementation, which was at lavarand.sgi.com.

It seems to live on at lavarnd.org

Yeah, that was SGI. It now lives here.

All of our webcams, except one, are covered. :-)

All of our webcams, except one, are covered. :-)

All of our webcams, except one, are covered. :-)

All of our webcams, except one, are covered. :-)

LavaRND uses a lens-capped webcam on high-gain to generate provably random numbers, /dev/random is only pseudo-random, and not suitable for mission-critical randomness, IE: One-time pads for important data.

LavaRND is bullet-proof, weapons grade true random, for all the cost of a £20 web-cam.

If you want to have your own "real" random number source (not pseudo-random), have a look at LavaRND, which make use of a simple webcam as a random noise source.

Hey, I want football games to start with them plugging in a lava lamp attached to a laptop.

We will throw the idea of the ethical executives against the wall and see if it sticks. A key driver in this process is the UI leading edge transparently rationalizes the synergistic drop dead date that the disintermediation strategy takes ownership of turnkey systems. Why do you think emerging big deals attack the problem of the timely corporate titans ? Because the UNIX team player provides an indication of a schedule. A professional platform is not the gating factors.

Actually, lava lamps are cool from a scientific point of view too : they are considered a very good source of randomness for RNGs.

Very shaggadelic ...

Theres always Lavarnd

Our LavaRnd project does not use Lava Lite(R) lamps.

Well, OK, we do have a Live LavaCan image that is sitting between two (but unrelated to the project) Lava Lite lamps. :-)

A little known fact: the lamp on the left is the lamp that was used in the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie trailer.

One of the SGI classic lavarand inventors (Bob Mende) is rebuilding the original classic site. Watch the LavaRnd news page for details.

So why do we call it LavaRnd? Well, one of the LavaRnd co-inventors likes to visit volcanoes, so we worked Lava into the name and site theme.

Our LavaRnd project does not use Lava Lite(R) lamps.

Well, OK, we do have a Live LavaCan image that is sitting between two (but unrelated to the project) Lava Lite lamps. :-)

A little known fact: the lamp on the left is the lamp that was used in the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie trailer.

One of the SGI classic lavarand inventors (Bob Mende) is rebuilding the original classic site. Watch the LavaRnd news page for details.

So why do we call it LavaRnd? Well, one of the LavaRnd co-inventors likes to visit volcanoes, so we worked Lava into the name and site theme.

Our LavaRnd project does not use Lava Lite(R) lamps.

Well, OK, we do have a Live LavaCan image that is sitting between two (but unrelated to the project) Lava Lite lamps. :-)

A little known fact: the lamp on the left is the lamp that was used in the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie trailer.

One of the SGI classic lavarand inventors (Bob Mende) is rebuilding the original classic site. Watch the LavaRnd news page for details.

So why do we call it LavaRnd? Well, one of the LavaRnd co-inventors likes to visit volcanoes, so we worked Lava into the name and site theme.

Our LavaRnd project does not use Lava Lite(R) lamps.

Well, OK, we do have a Live LavaCan image that is sitting between two (but unrelated to the project) Lava Lite lamps. :-)

A little known fact: the lamp on the left is the lamp that was used in the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie trailer.

One of the SGI classic lavarand inventors (Bob Mende) is rebuilding the original classic site. Watch the LavaRnd news page for details.

So why do we call it LavaRnd? Well, one of the LavaRnd co-inventors likes to visit volcanoes, so we worked Lava into the name and site theme.

The LavaRnd source is about to be released. If you want to be notified about the release, join the LavaRnd-release mailing list.

Isn't the key to generating a truly random number having an essentially analog source?

Not necessarily. Its best to have some kind of chaotic source. Also, being that the world we live in is analog, not digital, aren't all sources analog in nature?

An interesting source for chaotic conditions would be weather. If one could pick a seed from an arbitrary date in history and a seed for some arbitrary extra weather condition (increase/decrease temp, humidity, pressure, etc) and feed that back into a weather simulator, you should get some nice chaos pretty quickly.

What's up with the favicon that lavarnd is using? I don't get it...it seems totally random.

Lava lamp cluster!

Along similar lines, a system using visual noise rather than radioactive...

How can a deterministic computer create anything more then pseudorandom ?

By using lava lamps, of course

Jason
ProfQuotes

or point it at a lava lamp in order to generate a constant stream of seed data for encryption.

They did this, it used to be on lavarand.sgi.com, but that server is no more. It baically would have a digital image of multiple lava lamps, take the numbers from the digital image, run it rhough some hash like MD5 and then use those as random numbers. Lavarnd.org seems to be the closes spiritual successor.

for random numbers with

Lava Lamps? Now there is Lava lamp cryptography.

Read about it at:

LavaLamp

Thanks and have a weekend !

Today using a new method we call lavarnd (instead of lavarand with 3 a's) that uses the thermal noise from digitial cameras. While they were cool the new method is smaller and does not use the lamps, only a small USB based digitial camera. Our new, patent free method can generate about 100 Kbits/sec off of a Logitech QuickCam 3000 Pro USB camera on a Linux system with ~1GHz CPU.

We hope to have the full site, complete with Open Source code and CGI demos (old and new) ready by Nov 2002.

Today using a new method we call lavarnd (instead of lavarand with 3 a's) that uses the thermal noise from digitial cameras. While they were cool the new method is smaller and does not use the lamps, only a small USB based digitial camera. Our new, patent free method can generate about 100 Kbits/sec off of a Logitech QuickCam 3000 Pro USB camera on a Linux system with ~1GHz CPU.

We hope to have the full site, complete with Open Source code and CGI demos (old and new) ready by Nov 2002.

There's measuring beta particles of decaying Krypton: Fourmilab Hotbits

Then, there's LAVALAMP randomness: LavaRND

Oh, and you could connect a radio to a sparcstation, and use broadcast noise at: Random.org

Hell, you could use a webcam pointing at a staticy TV.

Lots of possibilities. Amazing what you can find with ... google.

In a nutshell, they pointed a camera at a lava lamp and used an algorithm to reduce the image into random numbers.

lavarand.sgi.com used to do something like this, except with lava lamps. They seem to have changed things a bit and moved to lavarnd.org.

Look it's being setup again, due in September, here.

It's got a picture of the old sgi setup.

.. once http://lavarand.sgi.com/, now: http://www.lavarnd.org/

Sounds like the old LavaRand program at SGI. These days the project has almost been moved to http://www.lavarnd.org

IIRC, they had an array of lava lamps which they took digital images of every 30 seconds or so, and then ran through some form of diff. Turns out the diffs were pretty random, or near enough to seed a good random generator.

Cheers, Noah

Most cyphers are pseudo-random to some degree. Nearly all of them will pass various statistical tests for randomness and entropy measurements to some degree. How well they pass is another matter and it something on which one can construct an entropy signature.

In Steganography you want your plaintext to appear statistically as identical as you can to your chaff / image / noise stream. Creating a good match is difficult. Hany Farid, for example, is attempting to use various tests to identify plaintext within an image. With the right tests one should help identify which is noise and which is plaintext.

To combat Farid's method one needs a cryptographically strong PRNG or true random source. Then bias the output in a fashion that is identical to the noise (big handwave here ... this is hard to do well). Finally mix the plaintext with the biased stream and inject it into the noise in a way that is known to you and the receiver.

I have yet to come across something that could generate as random a number in as closed a space...

The next generation LavaRnd will give you that in a very compact space, using a patent-free algorithm and open source demo software. Final hacking is going on now. Code completion and demos will soon follow. Paper to be published sometime after ...

p.s.: Gotta love moderating. My original article stays a 1 and your reply gets a 2. Both are directly on topic while some joke gets a 4. Maybe moderation scores are a good source of random noise? :-)

The classic lavarand site (random numbers via Lava Lite Lamps), which is hosted on reality, is going away as well.

We are planning to bring on-line a and improved version of LavaRnd (open sourced and patent-free) at www.LavaRnd.org hopefully before reality goes away.

The classic lavarand site (random numbers via Lava Lite Lamps), which is hosted on reality, is going away as well.

We are planning to bring on-line a and improved version of LavaRnd (open sourced and patent-free) at www.LavaRnd.org hopefully before reality goes away.