[tt] Random numbers created out of nothing

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:23:39PM -0400, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> On Sep 30, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> Right from the snake-oil-security-dept.
> Really?  Just what about it is snake oil?  Quantum vacuum fluctuations  

That QM RNGs are special in comparison to other RNGs, which have been
shipping in mainstream systems (both chipsets and CPUs) for many years.

> are real, they're random in as strong a sense as anything we have access 
> to.  True random numbers are a fundamental primitive.  They're talking 
> 200 Mb/second for 100 Euros.  That's not bad, if they can get there.

How about GBit/s, for free?

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/intel-makes-a-digital-coin-tosser-for-future-processors

> What in the claims here is false, misleading, solves a problem for which 

The claim that QM RNGs produce qualitatively different
entropy than dozens of existing, deployed hardware RNGs.

> there are better proven solutions, or in any other way deserves to be 
> dismissed?  (OK, the headline is a bit over the top - but that's not the 
> fault of the researchers....)

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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