New random secure numbers
Researchers have devised a new kind of random number generator, for encrypted communications and other uses, that is cryptographically secure, inherently private and, most importantly, certified random by laws of physics
That is important because randomness is surprisingly rare. Although the welter of events that transpire in the course of daily life can certainly seem haphazard and arbitrary, none of them is genuinely random in the sense that they could not be predicted given sufficient knowledge. Indeed, true randomness is almost impossible to come by.
That situation is a source of urgent and persistent concern to cryptographers who need to encrypt valuable data and messages by using a long string of random numbers to form a "key" to encode and decode the information. For practical purposes, encoders typically employ various mathematical algorithms called "pseudo-random number generators" to approximate the ideal. But they can never be completely certain that the system used to produce those number strings is invulnerable to adversaries or that a seemingly random sequence is not, in fact, predictable in some manner.
Now, however, a team of experimentalists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) , in partnership with European quantum information scientists, has demonstrated a method of producing a certifiably random string of numbers based on fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. They reported their results in the 15 April 2010 issue of Nature.
