The future of security?

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Random numbers faster
A laser plus some calculations creates strings of orderless bits for encryption By Laura Sanders Web edition : Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 Text Size With a laser, a mirror and some simple calculations, researchers have created a fast, reliable way to produce long strings of random numbers. This speedy method, reported in the July 10 Physical Review Letters, may one day be used to improve data encryption, computer simulations and even gambling software.

Generating truly random numbers isn’t easy. Many techniques rely on computer algorithms to create a seemingly unpredictable chain of numbers. But such methods, says study coauthor Michael Rosenbluh, are not truly random. Under certain conditions, anyone with the same program could reproduce an identical series. Despite this flaw, many of today’s encryption programs still rely on such computer-generated numbers.

Other techniques, based on the inherent messiness of physical processes, generate truly random numbers but work too slowly to be practical. These systems create strings of random bits — 0s and 1s — that can encode numbers. “If it takes you 10 years to generate a gigabit, it’s not very helpful,” says Rosenbluh, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “What we’ve shown is that you can generate very random numbers at very high rates.”

In the new study, researchers harnessed chaos from a laser to generate 12.5 gigabits of data —more than twice the data a standard audio CD holds — every second. This rate, the researchers say, beats the 1.7 gigabits per second of another laser-based method reported by a different group last year, and is on par with the speed of computer-based number generators...