Quantum Random Numbers For Download

PSUdaemon writes "The University of Geneva has produced a website that allows you to download truly random numbers generated from an Optical quantum random number generator. They will also be releasing a client API that you can use directly in your codes to download random numbers."

Comments

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[zulux]

If you felt paranoid enough to need quantumly generated random numbers, would you really get the numbers over the internet from an untrusted source?

Even if this source of randomness is compromised, adding it to your already existing sources of randomness coulden't hurt. It's best to layer sources of randomness on top of each other - so if one source or two isen't random, the whole stack of randomness isen't compromised.

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[JabberWokky]

I would imagine that it's suffering from overuse right now. Top story on Slashdot and all.

However, yes... you can trust this to be random, and no, you can't trust it to "correctly destroy all of the information between here and there".

I don't believe that the intent of this is to do realworld crypto nor games (which is what other people are claiming the other "major" use of random numbers are). A set of purely random numbers is really only useful to people testing mathematic theories or other high math science work. For crypto, decent pseudo-random sequences (or the old "pull from an analog source" trick) is perfectly fine. This is overkill for realworld crypto (not to mention broadcast via the internet), which means that this is primarily useful - to math scientists.

--
Evan

Re:How do they know ?

[astroboscope]

How do they really really know for certain, that these numbers are truly random?

There are statistical tests (see Knuth), like spectral flatness and incompressibility, but complete "certainty" has to rest on the theoretical underpinnings of QM, with testing by Bell's inequality (discussed elsewhere on this page).

And what kinds of applications might they be used for?

Secure communications, ignoring for now the problem of distributing the random bits.

Why does it need to be a quantum random number generator? How come you cant use an aerial and pick up white noise?

That "white noise" is contaminated by a jumble of deterministic TV and radio signals, that potential attackers could also detect or predict. It would be better to detach the aerial and amplify the output from a warm resistor, which is I think what the VIA motherboards do. Conceivably, though, somebody with far too much time and money on their hands could watch (or have watched) the molecules in your resistor unreasonably closely, and attempt guessing what they'll do. Using smaller particles is better, since observing them perturbs them so that their behavior can't be predicted, but that's QM by definition. You (and VIA) could also argue that warm resistors already include lots of quantum noise.