A team from the Indian Institute of Science has created a "record-breaking" true random number generator (TRNG) that can increase data encryption and security for sensitive digital data like credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information. The paper describing this gadget was published in the journal ACS Nano, according to a news release issued by the Bengaluru-based IISc on Friday.
"For security reasons, almost everything we do on the internet is encrypted. "The quality of random number generation determines the strength of this encryption," says Nithin Abraham, a PhD student from IISc's Department of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE).
Abraham is a member of the IISc team lead by associate professor of ECE Kausik Majumdar.
Only approved individuals with access to a cryptographic "key" can decode encrypted material. However, to prevent hacking, the key must be unpredictable and so created randomly.
Pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) rely on mathematical formulae or pre-programmed tables to generate numbers that appear random but aren't.
A TRNG, on the other hand, obtains random numbers from naturally unpredictable physical processes, hence increasing its security.