LinuxCertified: Randomness Shouldn’t Be Left to Chance – Howto

“Good Random Number Generation is a key component to modern
cryptography, statistical problem solving techniques, communication
security, stock market prediction, etc., but is extremely difficult
to implement on deterministic machines like modern computers. There
is a large library of ‘Psuedo-Random’ algorithms that have been
written to generate ‘random like’ number sequences, but given the
same starting values or ‘seeds,’ they will produce exactly the same
sequence. This predictability makes them ideal for some types of
problems (see Perlin Noise for a great example), but an extreme
liability for other uses.

“A truly random (completely unpredictable, and statistically
sound) number generator needs a true chaotic randomness source
feeding it. One of the best sources of statistically sound
randomness is from quantum effects, such as radioactive decay,
electron vibration noise, etc. It just so happens that there’s a
measurable quantum mechanical effect on silicon, and both Intel and
AMD have been nice enough to put device hook to this into some of
their hardware.

“I’ll show you how to make this work…”

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