Cryptography on Nokia N9
Cryptography on Nokia N9

Cryptography Algorithms using an old Nokia N9

If you have an old Nokia phone like N9, then don’t think it a useless trash. Scientists have found a way to treasure, that even an old phone can be of great use . This is strange yet extremely interesting to know how scientists have demonstrated a technique to generate modern cryptography algorithms just with the help of light and Nokia N9. It is a fact that even if computers can make some wondrous calculations but it is not a good option while creating random numbers. Hence computer generated random numbers often become easy to decrypt.

Cryptography Algorithms using an old Nokia N9

Scientists have found out that light has inherent randomness. It’s not easy for us to understand what that means. Scientist William Herkewitz says in Popular Mechanics,

According to quantum mechanics, it’s impossible to predict exactly when an atom will emit a particle of light. And over a given amount of time, the exact number of light particles any light source will produce is also inherently random.

When the 8 MP camera is used to capture picture, each image captures a variation of light which means a variation of photons. Each picture snapped from the camera showed a considerable amount of variation in photons. So these variations can be plot mathematically to find out the random numbers. Scientists explain,”If everybody on earth used such a device constantly at 1 Gbps, it would take 1060 times the age of the universe for one to notice a deviation from a perfectly random bit string.”

Now the question arises how random will the random number generated by N9 be like? “This really shows the potential feasibility for QRNG on a chip,” says Feihu Xu, a physicist who specializes in QRNG at the University of Toronto. He said all required calculations or operatuns can be scaled down at micro level and without the help of any old Nokia mobile, it’s possible to generate a secured system.

Source: Popular Mechanics

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