1992-10-26 - Re: Alpha Particles and One Time Pads

Header Data

From: marc@kg6kf.ampr.org (Marc de Groot - KG6KF)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 235c7c3e14ca0abdb4ef75a7cbe79f081cb2aae7eb5ca8ebfcc604717216bfc1
Message ID: <9210261024.AA11069@kg6kf.ampr.org>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1992-10-26 10:44:55 UTC
Raw Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 03:44:55 PPE

Raw message

From: marc@kg6kf.ampr.org (Marc de Groot - KG6KF)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 03:44:55 PPE
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Alpha Particles and One Time Pads
Message-ID: <9210261024.AA11069@kg6kf.ampr.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Tim May sez:
	Here's a posting I just sent to sci.crypt, dealing with using alpha
	particle sources as noise sources for generating one-time pads.
	
Tim,
Why not use a back-biased germanium diode, or other noisy semiconductor
junction?  Seriously, the NRC has allowed the smoke detector people to
spread those little radioactive chunks of Americium for too long.

John Walker of AutoDesk actually built an IBM-PC card that generated
random numbers from a radioactive source.

All the best,

^M






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