Every time someone attempts to create an unbreakable password or send a private message, they must trust a number. That number is supposed to be one that a computer has generated completely at random. Unfortunately, no computer has been able to actually guarantee that this number is truly random. Until now.
To get truly random numbers, physicists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland turned to the quantum world. They can prove that the numbers their technique spits out really are random (with only a vanishingly small chance that they are wrong).
A number that’s proven to be random can help protect private data through encryption. Here’s why. Encryption works by turning private information into a scrambled code using a secret “key.” The key is built from a random number. If that number is truly random, then no one can unscramble the information without the key. However, if it’s not truly random, a hacker could figure out the pattern behind it and reconstruct the key. And that would expose the formerly masked information.
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