[ISN] Ottawa physicist uses science to generate truly random numbers

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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Ottawa+physicist+uses+science+generate+truly+random+numbers/5779618/story.html

By Tom Spears
Postmedia News
November 28, 2011

OTTAWA -- An Ottawa physicist has developed a way to generate random 
numbers, the key to encrypting data in ways that hackers can't figure 
out.

Ben Sussman builds quantum technologies at the National Research 
Council. He's tapping into the fact that at the tiny (or quantum) scale 
of photons and electrons, events don't follow our familiar ideas of 
cause and effect, and can happen in completely random ways.

To people who want to encrypt data, this is a potential source of 
randomly-chosen numbers that are used as a "key" to lock and unlock 
sensitive data â military transmissions, banking transactions, or your 
email.

The idea is that if no one knows how the key was created in the first 
place, hackers and code-breakers won't be able to figure out the secret 
and decode the messages.

[...]

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