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A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

atlasobscura.com

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Re: A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

#31

Post by pvg »

Houshalter wrote: post #18
samuel wrote: post #17

I might be prejudiced, but this looks like a big PR stunt/done for the cool factor kind of thing. Aren't there simpler/saner alternatives for getting good randomness?

What would be an easier way? A wall of lava lamps seems pretty easy to set up.

The zillions of sources of EM/thermal/etc noise. It's so prevalent, most of the time the effort is spent in trying to get rid of it.

Re: A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

#32

Post by tptacek »

samuel wrote: post #17

I might be prejudiced, but this looks like a big PR stunt/done for the cool factor kind of thing. Aren't there simpler/saner alternatives for getting good randomness?

It is entirely, 100% a publicity stunt with no practical importance whatsoever.

Re: A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

#37

Post by firethief »

MBCook wrote: post #24
comboy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

busy streets webcams?

That would be susceptible to traffic patterns.

Not meaningfully. The input doesn't need to be uniform, just unpredictable. Statistical patterns are fine, as long as no one can predict exactly what's going to happen (to the pixel level). Even if all the drivers on the road were collaborating, they couldn't coordinate well enough to feed the camera adversarially predictable inputs. At least, not human drivers...

Re: A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

#38

Post by pns »

samuel wrote: post #17

I might be prejudiced, but this looks like a big PR stunt/done for the cool factor kind of thing. Aren't there simpler/saner alternatives for getting good randomness?

See cloudflare blog post conclusion - they're quite aware it's hopefully unnecessary and possibly just a flair factor (their pun :) but may help prevent an attack ever so slightly.

"Hopefully we’ll never need LavaRand. Hopefully, the primary entropy sources used by our production machines will remain secure, and LavaRand will serve little purpose beyond adding some flair to our office. But if it turns out that we’re wrong, and that our randomness sources in production are actually flawed, then hopefully LavaRand will be our hedge, making it just a little bit harder to hack Cloudflare."

Re: A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

#40

Post by tptacek »

pns wrote: post #38
samuel wrote: post #17

I might be prejudiced, but this looks like a big PR stunt/done for the cool factor kind of thing. Aren't there simpler/saner alternatives for getting good randomness?

See cloudflare blog post conclusion - they're quite aware it's hopefully unnecessary and possibly just a flair factor (their pun :) but may help prevent an attack ever so slightly. "Hopefully we’ll never need LavaRand. Hopefully, the primary entropy sources used by our production machines will remain secure, and LavaRand will serve little purpose beyond adding some flair to our office. But if it turns out that we’re…

You know, that, or actually fuzzing their proxy code.
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