Cloudflare uses lava lamps as a random number generator

Post by CorvusCrypto » Sun, Aug 20, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #11

CorvusCrypto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they use this alongside CSPRNGs. Would make sense given the theorem that states any random number XORed with even highly-ordered input maintains its entropy.

There are lots of people in the crypto world who have serious issues with XORing random sources together. I haven't yet seen a good argument why it's a bad idea, and part of me thinks it might be a way to get more software using "rdrand" or other insecure sources unmodified.

I think the bad idea stigma stems from people XORing from the same source. That totally is a bad idea, but if two sources are wholly independent, the maximum entropy in the combined systems is maintained.

To the people that just say it's never a good idea and scoff at any reasoning I'd remind them about OTPs. They are a special case related to this principle of XORing two independent sources together where only one input is random and it is proven mathematically to work.

Re: Cloudflare uses lava lamps as a random number generator

Re: Cloudflare uses lava lamps as a random number generator