Cloudflare has lava lights and double pendulums in its office to hedge the risk of random number generation



What is important in encryption is the generation of randomness. At

Cloudflare , we basically generate random numbers using Linux, but we have installed a 'lava light' and a 'double pendulum' in our office as random number generators that can be used in case there is a problem. .

Harnessing chaos in the Cloudflare office
https://blog.cloudflare.com/ja-jp/harnessing-office-chaos-ja-jp/

Randomness 101: LavaRand in Production
https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production



The Hardest Working Office Design In America Encrypts Your Data–With Lava Lamps

https://www.fastcodesign.com/90137157/the-hardest-working-office-design-in-america-encrypts-your-data-with-lava-lamps

Cloudflare's San Francisco office has a facility called LavaRand , which is made up of multiple lava lights. Lavalight is a lighting device that contains floating substances such as colored water and oil in a container, and the heat from the lighting causes convection that causes irregular movement.



'LavaRand' is a mechanism that provides unpredictable randomness to CSPRNG (pseudo random number generator) by capturing the movement of a large number of lava lights lined up on a wall with a camera.



Actually, 'LavaRand' is not original to Cloudflare, but was developed by computer manufacturer Silicon Graphics. A patent was obtained under the name ``Method of feeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash digitized using a chaotic system,'' but it has already expired.

In addition, the London office has a similar mechanism using a double pendulum instead of 'LavaRand'. This double pendulum was once exhibited at the Science Museum in London, where you can get a glimpse of its movement.



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in Web Service,   Hardware, Posted by logc_nt