Codes, and ciphers, and encryption – oh my!
Anyone that knows me know I am a total and unapologetic geek. I love all things techy and sciencey. I was the kid that built an argon laser using broken light bulbs, glass test tubes and a model train transformer (beat that Bill gates -oh, ya, you did). Anyways, codes, ciphers, encryption – these things have always interested me. In today’s all digital world, encryption is a very important part of keeping your ‘stuff’ safe. This is particularly true when communicating over the Internet. Notice the green “https” in front of your bank’s Website URL? That shows your connection is encrypted so no one can read your user name and password ‘in the clear.’
Random numbers are the key to good encryption. And by design, computers are inherently really bad at generating truly random numbers. But can lava lamps be used for data encryption?
Random motion = random number
One of the companies that we work with, Cloudflare (www.cloudflare.com) has taken random number generation for data encryption to a whole new level. These guys have come up with a fantastic method of generating random numbers by using the random fluid motion of lava lamps. By taking a high-resolution picture of a wall of 100 lava lamps, they create true non-predictable random numbers used to secure their web traffic. We love companies that take innovative methods to solve real-world problems.
Follow the link below to the story at FastCompany to learn more about how and why Cloudflare uses this method and prepare to get your geek on!
