Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

True Random Number Generator Goes Online

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on

amigoro writes "A 'true' random number generator that relies on the unpredictable quantum process of photon emission has gone online providing academic and scientific community access to true random numbers free of charge."

14 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. random.org ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hasn't random.org done this for a while already? Perhaps they don't have academic backing, but I do believe they use numbers generated by atomic decay.

    1. Re:random.org ? by stinerman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Indeed. First page:

      RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. ...

      The service has been operating since 1998 and was built and is being maintained by Mads Haahr who is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.

    2. Re:random.org ? by psu_whammy · · Score: 5, Informative

      You could, say, read up on the statistics they give you. The site has all sorts of fun info on exactly how their RNG works, and daily stats on the randomness of the numbers presented.

    3. Re:random.org ? by AutumnLeaf · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wonder, how could you know that their numbers are truly random, as they claim?

      You can never know that. You can test "properties of randomness" and conclude "it looks random." But you have no way of knowing if that hopefully random sequence cross-correlates to a non-random sequence you haven't found, but that passes all of the tests.

      On the other hand, there is no randomness like quantum randomness. So if you believe their bit-stream faithfully represents the source, then in this case you can feel pretty good about it.

  2. Don't misunderstand by Icarus1919 · · Score: 4, Informative

    True random number generators have been around in hardware form for a while based on a number of different processes, not quantum only. But this is being offered to the community at large, who may not have the means to procure or pay for a hardware solution.

  3. quantum random number generators by Wise+Dragon · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is neat but there have been other quantum random number generators online for years. This one by id Quantique springs to mind... I'm not sure what this new service provides that others don't. If you REALLY want secure random numbers you should buy a QRNG PCI card and make them yourself so you're the only one with a copy.

  4. Other sources of true random numbers by i_like_spam · · Score: 4, Informative

    Atmospheric noise
    Lava lamps
    Radioactive decay
    Entropy

  5. Re:Wow! by Xiph1980 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Too bad that's only ROT13:
    Not really the hardest of encryptions to crack.

    ..OMG, did anyone see that to register you have
    to solve a math problem like:

    derivative of (5*sin 3x +6cos(-pi/2))

    Nice!

    Here is a direct link to the generator, you can
    download the client from here as well:

    http://random.irb.hr/

    QRand Command-line Utility [v0.2, 2007-07-17]
    Note 1: Compiles under Visual Studio and g++.
    Note 2: Windows executable included.
    Note 3: GNU Linux executable included.
    --
    Manuals are your last resort only
  6. Re:Wow! by Xiph1980 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Your mother a math teacher or a PhD?
    My mother doesn't even know what a sine is, let alone solve that to 15*cos(3x)

    --
    Manuals are your last resort only
  7. Why pseudo-random for research? Reproducibility! by edbaskerville · · Score: 3, Informative

    For scientific research, there's a very good reason to use pseudo-random numbers: reproducibility.

    If you're analyzing a stochastic model, you want to be able to generate lots of runs with different random sequences and gather statistics from the ensemble. But if you see interesting behavior in a particular run and want to take a closer look, you want to be able to go back and run it again, exactly as it happened the first time. In this case, you don't want real randomness, you want pseudo-randomness with good statistical properties. I'm currently checking through my code to make sure you can do just that when using this tool.

  8. Re:lava lamps at SGI by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    That would be Lavarand from, oh, just 10 years ago.

    Rich

    --
    libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  9. MPAA is on to you! by Aereus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Great, now you're going to get yourself sued by the MPAA for randomly guessing their new encryption key!

  10. Re:wonky definition of pseudo-random by Baron+von+Leezard · · Score: 3, Informative

    The intuitive disconnect here is that humans have a well-documented inability to understand or true randomness. By true randomness, I mean in a mathematical sense: uniformly distributed values over some range, with each value independent from the next (uncorrelated). Just try it: whatever you come up with, whether it be some algorithm, hardware, whatever — it will probably fail all the statistical tests for true randomness. And if it can't pass those tests, then it will be useless for most of the applications that one needs random things for... simulations, encryption, authentication, etc. And mind you, even if one can pass all the existing tests with some method, it doesn't mean that someone will invent a new statistical test tomorrow that the method will fail spectacularly. Like many apparently simple problems, random number generation is surprisingly deep and very, very difficult to do right.

    [B.v.L]

  11. Re:Wait... by ydra2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    > Actually, a random number generator isn't really random unless it is possible
    > for it to generate the number 42 a thousand times in a row...

    > Not so.

    > A random number generator might generate numbers in the range 0x10000000 to
    > 0xfffffff0 (and thus never generate 42 (0x0000002a) as a result). As long as
    > the distribution within that range is uniform, non-periodic, and lacking in
    > underlying structure, it's random. If it meets the first and last requirement
    > but is periodic, then it's pseudo-random.

    Actually so!

    Your range theory is a misunderstanding of RNG (true or pseudo). To restrict the range of values output is simply a matter of interpreting the bitsream in whatever way you choose.

    I could take any bitstream and get numbers either integer 1 and integer 2, and no other values allowed, but that doesn't mean the RNG is limited. Thats just my algorithm stripping all but the last bit and adding one, or whatever way I choose to restrict the range of numbers. That process has nothing to do with the underlying RNG and its randomness.