Another example of physicists selling their basic research by linking it to cryptography in a way that makes no sense. Generating quantum random numbers is not solving any real cryptographic problems. It's just marketing ploy or ignorance.<p>DJB: Is the security of quantum cryptography
guaranteed by the laws of physics?
<a href="https://sidechannels.cr.yp.to/qkd/holographic-20180312.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://sidechannels.cr.yp.to/qkd/holographic-20180312.pdf</a><p>DJB: Security fraud in Europe's "Quantum Manifesto"
<a href="https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160516-quantum.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160516-quantum.html</a><p>Schneier: Quantum Cryptography: As Awesome As It Is Pointless
<a href="https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/10/quantum%5Fcryptography.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/10/quantum%5Fc...</a>
Good hardware generators are based on Johnson–Nyquist resistor noise, that is just as unpredictable, and generated by thermal circulation of charge carriers in conductors.<p>In real life, RNG attacks are against the implementation not the noise source, even something as "predictable" as "atmospheric noise" is random enough for all practical applications.
Is it really that relevant whether randomness is true* thanks to quantum effects rather than obfuscated-enough pseudo-random based on really hard to predict entropy sources; or is this more a PR stunt? I mean, is it realistic that someone would ever manage to predict e.g. electronic signal noise in a useful enough manner?<p>* To nit-pick, the question whether quantum mechanics are truly random boils down to Bell's theorem, which has been experimentally supported, but still leaves some loopholes open: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experiments" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experim...</a>
When you're generating random numbers from a physical source, how do you detect when there's some failure in the hardware or sensors that's reducing the randomness? Can you use redundancy so the probability of this is vanishingly low?
Anyone know a cheap DIY way to generate quantum-random numbers at home? For example, get a Geiger counter and wire it up to code that counts the milliseconds between clicks... something like that?
To all the people saying high quality random numbers are not important for crypto, there have been a number of important failures over the years due to semi-predictable keys. And there is no way to generate randomness in software, while quantum sources can be provably random.<p>It just makes the crypto system easier to reason about.
how do we decide or quantify that certain random numbers are good or bad?<p>if I flip a coin? maybe that's inadequate, but can we measure how much it is failing to be random?