The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
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The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
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Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#2I don't remember their initial post about the lava lamps, but I had assumed that was a marketing gimmick more than anything... a neat visual way to convey what entropy is in a way normal humans can comprehend.
It's certainly not a scalable solution for entropy, and there are so many ways for it to fail as a sole source, as well.
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#3[dead]
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#4I don't remember their initial post about the lava lamps, but I had assumed that was a marketing gimmick more than anything... a neat visual way to convey what entropy is in a way normal humans can comprehend. It's certainly not a scalable solution for entropy, and there are so many ways for it to fail as a sole source, as well.
I'm dead sure they aren't using them for anything.
This is SF. If they were really used for anything, a random dude in a black hoodie and white SUV can just smash the glass and take down the internet, and the SF police wouldn't do a thing.
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#5With a one-time pad being, as I understand it, the only really good encryption, I am surprised there is not a market for pairs of matched hard drives—the pair having the same "one time pad" stored on them (how you generate those numbers is left as an exercise for the company marketing them).
A simple app could be used by parties on both ends of the message—an app that relies on an associated drive to act as the pad.
If you become aware that one of the two matched drives has been compromised (stolen perhaps by an outside party), you destroy its partner.
(Perhaps too you can design the drive in such a way as to make it non-trivial to copy—you more or less need possession of the drive itself. That makes it unlikely for there to be a 3rd drive the two parties are unaware of.)
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#6> And if it is broken… then you’re screwed, sorry. See, both your encryption and your CSPRNG relies on a cipher. If either is broken, then so is your whole system.
Not necessarily. The CSPRNG state could in theory be leaked via sidechannels. Your cipher key could be leaked via sidechannels too, but symmetric encryption keys tend to be shorter lived.
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#7As far as cryptographic security theater goes, it's hard for me to get angry about lava lamps.
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#8I don't remember their initial post about the lava lamps, but I had assumed that was a marketing gimmick more than anything... a neat visual way to convey what entropy is in a way normal humans can comprehend. It's certainly not a scalable solution for entropy, and there are so many ways for it to fail as a sole source, as well.
I'm dead sure they aren't using them for anything. This is SF. If they were really used for anything, a random dude in a black hoodie and white SUV can just smash the glass and take down the internet, and the SF police wouldn't do a thing.
If you look up videos on YouTube, you'll see that they allow visitors to stand between the lava lamps and the cameras (sometimes even entire groups!). And I've always wondered: doesn't that reduce entropy, since people usually wear monotone clothing? And if the lamps are so important, why would they allow that? Maybe the lamps do contribute something, but their system most likely already generates enough entropy with or without the lamps...
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#9I don't remember their initial post about the lava lamps, but I had assumed that was a marketing gimmick more than anything... a neat visual way to convey what entropy is in a way normal humans can comprehend. It's certainly not a scalable solution for entropy, and there are so many ways for it to fail as a sole source, as well.
I'm dead sure they aren't using them for anything. This is SF. If they were really used for anything, a random dude in a black hoodie and white SUV can just smash the glass and take down the internet, and the SF police wouldn't do a thing.
Smashing the glass wouldn't make it less effective. The sensor itself has noise, and the camera output is fed into an HMAC with a key based on the current nanosecond before being combined with a traditional entropy source before it ever went anywhere. Even then, it was only used as a seed for the entropy pool on the actual server.
Re: The Futility of Lava Lamps: What Random Means
#10With a one-time pad being, as I understand it, the only really good encryption, I am surprised there is not a market for pairs of matched hard drives—the pair having the same "one time pad" stored on them (how you generate those numbers is left as an exercise for the company marketing them). A simple app could be used by parties on both ends of the message—an app that relies on an associated drive to act as the pad.…
I've heard it said that such systems may be used by militaries, where they have an organizational structure naturally-suited to large keystream distribution.
Unlike e-commerce, it's no problem to physically send the proverbial officer handcuffed to a briefcase to the nuclear submarine before it submerges for 6 months.
Also the messages to be secured are, um, short and... infrequent.