Seems somewhat over-hyped, and not especially new either.
Jim Bell
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3607142/Cybersecurity-breakthrough-masterpiece-technique-create-truly-random-numbers-revealed.html
"It could mean completely secure encryption of data, be it emails or voting -
and even help beat climate change.
Researchers have revealed a groundbreaking new technique to create truly random
numbers for the first time.
The new method creates truly random numbers with less computational effort than
other methods, which could facilitate significantly higher levels of security
for everything from consumer credit card transactions to military
communications.
The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers, such as air
temperatures and stock market prices sampled over time, and turns them into one
sequence of truly random numbers.
'This is a problem I've come back to over and over again for more than 20
years,' said David Zuckerman, who led the study.Described by one cryptography
expert as a 'masterpiece,' the University of Texas at Austin research could
have wide ranging implications.
'I'm thrilled to have solved it.'Computer science professor Zuckerman and
graduate student Eshan Chattopadhyay will present research about their method
in June at the annual Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), the Association
for Computing Machinery's premier theoretical computer science conference.
They publicly released a draft paper describing their method for making random
numbers in an online forum last year.
Oded Goldreich, a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of
Science in Israel, commented that even if it had only been a moderate
improvement over existing methods, it would have justified a 'night-long party.
'When I heard about it, I couldn't sleep,' says Yael Kalai, a senior researcher
working in cryptography at Microsoft Research New England who has also worked
on randomness extraction.
'I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. I ran to the (online) archive to look
at the paper. It's really a masterpiece.'
The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers and turns them into
one sequence of truly random numbers.
Weakly random sequences, such as air temperatures and stock market prices
sampled over time, harbor predictable patterns.
Truly random sequences have nothing predictable about them, like a coin toss.
The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers and turns them into
one sequence of truly random numbers.
Previous versions of randomness extractors were less practical because they
either required that one of the two source sequences be truly random (which
presents a chicken or the egg problem) or that both source sequences be close
to truly random.
This new method sidesteps both of those restrictions and allows the use of two
sequences that are only weakly random.
An important application for random numbers is in generating keys for data
encryption that are hard for hackers to crack.
Data encryption is critical for making secure credit card purchases and bank
transactions, keeping personal medical data private and shielding military
communications from enemies, among many practical applications.
Zuckerman says that although there are already methods for producing
high-quality random numbers, they are very computationally demanding.
His method produces higher quality randomness with less effort.
'One common way that encryption is misused is by not using high-quality
randomness,' says Zuckerman.
'So in that sense, by making it easier to get high-quality randomness, our
methods could improve security.'
Their paper shows how to generate only one truly random number – akin to one
coin toss – but Zuckerman's former student Xin Li has already demonstrated how
to expand it to create sequences of many more random numbers.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3607142/Cybersecurity-breakthrough-masterpiece-technique-create-truly-random-numbers-revealed.html#ixzz49e2Nyj2J
