Researchers claim spoof-proof random number generator breakthrough Scientists in the US have built a system for creating truly random numbers which cannot be tampered with by a third party. Random numbers might be needed to pick jury members out of a field without bias, or provide security algorithms. Quantum events offer the promise of true randomness. Meanwhile, a phenomenon called quantum …
The article contains a rather superficial and abstract description. But I guess they use the same protocol that is used for quantum key distribution.
When you generate a quantum key, you select the measurements with the same polarisation. If you select the measurements with the orthogonal polarizations, you should get purely random results.
There is currently a lot of effort to do efficient and fast quantum key distribution. Progress is fast in this field (especially in China).
This protocol will directly benefit from the quantum key generation progress, for free.
Clever.
In this part of AU juries are selected from a pool taken from the electoral roll but after the various disqualifications (eg holding a law degree), challenges and excuses, the pool is often not so large in regional centres.
Her indoors was empanelled for one trial that resulted in a hung jury, nearly two years later the case was retried and she was again called for jury service (the eligible pool was so small) and legal numpties allowed her to be empanelled for the same case which would have been an automatic mistrial if the prosecution hadn't abandoned the case for other reasons.
I don't think random numbers came into it at all.
They exclude lawyers there?
They don't in the US. In smaller cities there's a good chance they'll get tossed for cause, because there's a decent chance they'll know one of the lawyers involved in any given case. But they're absolutely called, and in bigger cities there's a chance they'll end up on a jury.
About the only guaranteed exclusions are having a felony conviction, being under 18, or being active duty military. Mental disability can get you out of it, as can physical disability, but they're not guaranteed.
Both sides get an equal chance at selecting jurors from the pseudo randomly selected pool. Different states may have different pools to select from, but not all residents are known to the pool, and some are exempt because of age, health or other reasons. That's why trumps conviction was fair. everyone had the same opportunity to put their thumb on the scale. Here there is a mandatory town census every year to get the potential jurors other places may use driver registration or voter registration.
<....."Random numbers might be needed to pick jury members out of a field without bias".....>
I am not sure that making any truly random selection of jurors would be in any way guaranteed to select 12 completely unbiased people. Most of the time it probably would achieve a varied mix, but I would expect that there would be a good liklihood that at some stage it would select 12 people all of whom would turn out to be highly biased.
Like many others around here, I have been around for long enough to realise that there is no such thing as 'Truly Random'.
Many years ago I lost count of the number of things that were claimed to be tamper-proof which turned out to be no such thing. I have no doubt that someone will at some future date find a way round this too.
There is a 'Truly Random' and it was documented some time ago. But, I doubt you need that amount of randomness in your applications.
Are we again permitted to reference or regard Dilbert cartoons without the consequent sanction of external cancellation?
You probably are, yes.
The problem with the digital world is the lack of any patina of time. Comments written 20 years ago are judged with the lens of society today.
Now, I certainly made jokes or comments 20 years ago that I wouldn't do now, either through maturity or simply because they're not socially acceptable any more. (The term 'Gay' to mean 'rubbish' in the early 2000s is a good example) If I expect people to contextualise the things I say, I have to at least give them the same level of respect.
Unfortunately that means we have to also accept it when the person in questions opinions go the other way. I have a friend who's well down the conspiracy rabbit hole. 20 years ago I respected his opinions on things, not so much now. That can be the same with Scott Adams.
Also.. and this is a concept that's long been lost to the ages... but the truth is people are complex, I can enjoy Adams incites on workplace culture, whilst still disliking his views on other things.
Also.. and this is a concept that's long been lost to the ages... but the truth is people are complex ...
A truth which Gen Z will come up against as they grow up. Meanwhile they display en masse the self-assurance and absolute believe in their own correctness which in my student days was only found in the loathsome creatures of the Christian Union.
s/Gen Z will come/each generation comes/
There, fixed that for you. I really do think this is something each generation has to re-discover. (I certainly did. It's a good thing so-called "social" media didn't exist when I was a lad; I'd shudder to have some of my early opinions unearthed.)
Even though things like Bayesian interpretation of quantum mechanics or superdeterminism exist, quantum mechanical randomness behaves as ‘truly random’ as far as we know. We have ruled out all the naïve ideas that/how it is not actually truly random.
And the other interpretations are generally of the type that results of QM measurements still appear truly random to us, just the universe is even crueller than you thought.
Quote: "...randomness which can be relied on..."
Forgive me, but my personal choice for randomness is the Palace of Westminster!
Recent random events:
- Supercomputers in Edinburgh, or not, or maybe........
- Winter heating supplement, or not, or maybe.....
- Pacific Ocean presence.......but then the propellor fell off.....
I'm sure other commentards here can establish a clear "randomness process" in London SW1......better than I can!
(1) We have a "fair coin".
(2) We toss the coin ten times.
(3) It comes up "heads" every one of the ten tries.
Most people (and most software assessments) would say the sequence of ten "heads" is not random......
......but, in this case, it is actually a random sequence............
(1) We have a "fair coin".
How does one "know" the coin is "fair?"
Leaving aside the question of the nature of knowledge an empiricist would minimally require you to perform a large number of coin tosses which should result in a binomial distribution around a mean of 50% head or tails and a variance of 0.25×Ntosses.
Diabolically you might imagine an engineered coin that could arrange a particular outcome with a tiny internal gyroscope which could be indistinguishable from a fair coin but actually perfectly deterministic.
I recall Bruce Schneier discussed sources of randomness in the context of cryptography, I think in his Cryptography Engineering, where it seems hardware sources weren't actually as attractive as one might have thought.
Leaving aside the question of the nature of knowledge an empiricist would minimally require you to perform a large number of coin tosses which should result in a binomial distribution around a mean of 50% head or tails and a variance of 0.25×Ntosses.
Not necessarily. It depends on how it was tossed and how the starting orientation was chosen. Start a coin heads up and "heads" requires 1, 2, 3, 4 ... full turns in the air while "tails" requires 1/2, 1 1/2, 2 1/2, 3 1/2, and these are not equally likely in sum.
They probably use 0000 as "unset".
They also tell you not to use several other 'special' sequences. While that reduces the search space, in practice an attacker only gets about three or four attempts so it doesn't matter much.
Nearly all PIN related fraud is shoulder surfing, tampering with the machine or other ways of discovering the PIN directly.
It's not. The article confuses the issue, which is forgivable, but some of the comments here also confuse the issue, which is less justifiable.
This is a method of verification, which is intrinsically tied to the randomization. That is, the randomization can't be broken from the verification.
The randomization isn't anything special, apart from being tied to quantum computing, which also has unique benefits not related to the quality of the randomization or the quality of the verification.
The randomness you are describing is impressive but is well known. In order to publish, novel ways of doing things need to be found. People will carry on inventing new ways of generating random numbers. I was going to say forever or until the cows come home but could not find a suitable epithet.
It is, because that PN junction will have bias from the 60Hz power supply and the 3-5GHz processor clock. Randomness is not 'good' or 'bad' although it may be 'good enough'. Some applications need the level that this kit provides. Compare it with time keeping, which has equally bonkers levels of technology. You don't need atomic clocks to catch your bus but you do need them to confirm Einstein's predictions.
"Randomness" is a quality of an algorithm or device which outputs values, not of a number itself.
The quality of a random number generator, roughly speaking, is the difficulty an adversary faces when trying to predict the next value, given knowledge of the generator's previous outputs and complete knowledge of its design.
Random number generators based on noise diodes are integrated into most CPU's and MCU's these days. There's very little to be gained from using quantum RNG's unless an adversary is able to hack their way into your network and computer. But being able to do that they wouldn't need to hack your RNG anyway.
In that case, both parties can generate random numbers independently, exchange them, and then XOR them to get the final result.
If there's a risk that one party sees the results of the other before committing to their random numbers, then exchange hashes first (and verify them after exchanging the actual random numbers).
A radio telescope pointed at the black hole in the center our galaxy should be capable of generating a nice stream of very not spoofable numbers. You could even go beyond what these guys did and make it more trustworthy by pointing multiple radio telescopes in different countries at the same spot. Since they'd be geographically separated their observations would pass through different parts of the space around Earth. That would insure that Earth based satellites etc. (even ones not publicly known) can't "get in the way" as it were. Since you have multiple receivers you avoid technical faults being responsible, and since they're located in different countries they'd be operated by different groups making it harder to compromise them all to get the "random" numbers you desire.
I remember seeing an article in Byte Magazine in the 70s, showing how to make a truly random number generator. It was based on a small sample of radioactive material, the random number seeds were continually regenerated by detecting random alpha particle emissions. So it's a lot easier to use "quantum" effects that cannot be spoofed, than they would have you believe. If you know a way to predict or alter the random emission of particles emitted by decaying isotopes, please submit your techniques to the Nobel Prize committee.
It was based on a small sample of radioactive material, the random number seeds were continually regenerated by detecting random alpha particle emissions.
If you know a way to predict or alter the random emission of particles emitted by decaying isotopes, please submit your techniques to the Nobel Prize committee.
Isn't the problem they're trying to solve one of tampering, not knowing that the source is random, but knowing that it's reached you uncompromised?
Many moons ago, when studying for my Master's I attended a unit on cryptography.
Where my take-away would turn out to be exactly this topic: what is randomness?
And learn that there are many kinds, and when dealing with these faddish computer thingies, you must make sure you choose the right one.
Followed by diving into the maths and resulting algorithms (and their implementation in programming language XYZ), until I was sobbing uncontrollably.
What's "useful" - and real - randomness to a mathematician, is different from what a scientist or medical researcher requires, and both of their requirements are useless, even disastrous from a security perspective, to a cryptographer.
Ok, so we have a really expensive and very random RNG, fine.
Now if only we could trust:
- the people who generate the numbers (because we don't get to have such a system at home)
- the software that uses the numbers
- the hardware we run the software on
- the microcode of such hardware
then we would be fine.
The research team generated random numbers 7,454 times in 40 days and found that a truly random number was generated 7,434 times, which they call a 99.7 percent success rate.
I understand the way we use language evolves over time, so I accept I may just be hitting that age, but this seems like a really odd statement.
Are we saying that maths is now open to opinion? (Or is it that it's ever so slightly over 99.7%?)
Quote (from quote): "...a truly random number...."
Sorry, but this phrase is about some RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS of a given string!
Suppose you have a RANDOM PROCESS running, and once in a while this RANDOM PROCESS spits out "0000000000000000000" as part of the output.
Please tell me how RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS can ASSERT that "THIS STRING IS NOT RANDOM".....when it clearly is randomly produced!
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