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

Use VIA cpus for good random numbers instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Nehemiah and higher VIA cpus have a really good hardware entropy source, and it's supported in all recent linux kernels.

is this really random?

[glen604]

Are they actually running the "Optical quantum random number generator" every time you click submit, or are they just pulling the numbers pre-generated from a database?

Single point of failure

[kapella]

As anything other than an academic exercise, this is silly if not outright dangerous.

Want to compromise any cryptographic system that uses this "pure" RNG? Man-in-the-middle the data connection, or just spoof DNS/IP addresses. Suddenly, you're in control of session key generation...

This is SOOOOOO Bad

[MerlynEmrys67]

Ok, let me get this right - you are expected to "trust" a source of randomness to be purely random, and to correctly destroy all of the information between here and there.

Plus I just asked for 1000 (the most allowed) numbers between 1 - 100. I was scared by what I got back.

50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 (repeated quite a bit - cut to pass the poster comment compression filter)

I was amazed. Any sane person will NOT outsource the generation of their source of randomness - it is WAY to critical.

Interesting, but not that useful

[Chris_Jefferson]

WHile this is cool, on the other hand we mainly need random numbers for two things. The first is to make algorithms which require random numbers to run correctly work and to make games interesting to play. For that kind of purpose this is overkill :)

The other reason we need them is for secure encryption purposes. If you felt paranoid enough to need quantumly generated random numbers, would you really get the numbers over the internet from an untrusted source?

What would be much more interesting would be if intel/AMD started including a random number generator directly on processors which allowed you to get some random numbers via some random process on chip.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Matchstick]

That's not quite the same sort of "there is no equation". There are equations that describe perfectly the time evolution of the 3-body problem. There is just (in general) no closed-form solution for the state of the system.

That said, even assuming a perfect integrator there's no way to measure the initial state precisely, so there are limits to how far you can evolve it computationally. However, similar arguments hold for the 2-body problem; so you'll have to find a more clever way of "macro-fying" quantum uncertainty effects.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

If you measured the state of the blocks, you would find that they obey Newtonian mechanics, and you could predict which block was on top, given enough information about their state at some point and the forces acting upon them.

So ? OK, now we know which block was on top. Now, how to we know WHICH BLOCK IS TAKEN ? Becomes more random, eh ? Now presume that the person who takes blocks out of the sack is clinically unpredictable. Now, is this TRULY random ?

Heisenberg's uncertainity principle is as much simplification as Newton's Laws of Mechanics.

My point is:
If you know what the starting qualities of each undivisible particle were in the very beginning of the existence (call it Big Bang or gnab gib or whatever), and also the Equation of the World (as I like to call it), you could predict everything in the universe (if you had enough computing power, of course).
Of course, it's hard to get the knowledge needed for such prediction, but in principle it's not impossible...

(again, pardon my english.)

Good for WEP keys

[stienman]

I got a hexidecimal random file a few years ago and randomly selected a passage of characters for my 128 bit wep key. Much stronger than "DonotHACKME" as a passphrase. Still as weak as WEP, but since it's a low data rate network, and a fairly secure key then it's going to take weeks for someone to collect enough info to crack it. Then all they have is access to the internet and an XP computer with no ports open.

But in general this type of resource is only good for small one off uses, research, and testing. They are providing it to see how good their distribution is, find problems with this type of setup before rolling out a for-pay service where you can have your own remote RNG. It would be good for laptop users who need an RNG that's more powerful than the dinky ones you can carry with you.

-Adam

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[firewrought]

I just believe that for everything there is a formula and that there's a kinda metaformula, which describes EVERYTHING in this world.... Maybe my theory is wrong.

It is wrong. Godel said so. The problem is that your metaformula describes all truths, but there are more truths than there are possible descriptions.