Lavarand was a

hardware random number generator In computing, a hardware random number generator (HRNG) or true random number generator (TRNG) is a device that generates random numbers from a physical process, rather than by means of an algorithm. Such devices are often based on microscopic ...

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

that worked by taking pictures of the patterns made by the floating material in

lava lamp A lava lamp is a decorative lamp, invented in 1963 by British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker, the founder of the lighting company Mathmos. It consists of a bolus of a special coloured wax mixture inside a glass vessel, the remainder of which ...

s, extracting random data from the pictures, and using the result to seed a

pseudorandom number generator A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG), is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers whose properties approximate the properties of sequences of random numbers. The PRNG-generate ...

Details

Although the secondary part of the random number generation uses a pseudorandom number generator, the full process essentially qualifies as a "true" random number generator due to the random seed that is used. However, its applicability is limited by its low bandwidth. It was covered under the now-expired , titled "Method for seeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash of a digitization of a

chaotic Chaotic was originally a Danish trading card game. It expanded to an online game in America which then became a television program based on the game. The program was able to be seen on 4Kids TV (Fox affiliates, nationwide), Jetix, The CW4Kid ...

system." by Landon Curt Noll, Robert G. Mende, and Sanjeev Sisodiya. From 1997 to 2001, there was a Web site at lavarand.sgi.com demonstrating the technique.

Landon Curt Noll Landon Curt Noll (born October 28, 1960) is an American computer scientist, co-discoverer of the 25th Mersenne prime and discoverer of the 26th, which he found while still enrolled at Hayward High School and concurrently at California State Uni ...

, one of the process's originators, went on to help develop LavaRnd, which does not use lava lamps. Despite the short life of lavarand.sgi.com, it is often cited as an example of an online random number source. ,

Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in San ...

maintains a similar system of lava lamps for securing

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

traffic.

References

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External links

Archived version of original Lavarand.com from Archive.org
(pictures do not work)
Cloudflare blog post about LavaRand in production
Silicon Graphics Random number generation