Perfect randomness realized for the first time (phys.org)

submitted 1 day ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/science@lemmy.world

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In the long term, this work could play a similar role in digital security as atomic clocks do for timekeeping: a physically certified source of randomness that other systems can rely on. Possible applications range from the encryption of sensitive communications and digital identities to public randomness services for lotteries and blockchain applications.

Such methods could also become crucial for quantum-secure communications systems. This is because even the strongest cryptographic methods are only as secure as the random numbers on which they are based: the better the randomness, the more robust the encryption—if it is weak, the entire system becomes vulnerable.

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[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago

Interesting; the pseudorandom seed is important because we don’t really want perfectly random, we want perfectly unpredictable. The combination of the two means there’s no way to determine the starting point OR the distribution.

A perfectly random seed would again give away the disturbance any ordered data would create in it. But the three values taken together should create a result with no reversible distribution and no determinable seed.

Essentially, you create an infinite number of one time pads with no correlation between them.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

closest I could come to an explanation in the article: " Renner's coworkers could then amplify the randomness of the measurement results further using a special algorithm." so some special algotithm takes sources of imperfect randomness and then magically make it perfect???