Learn more about the Cloudflare lava lamp and how it generates random numbers. Our Cloudflare Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

Cloudflare Lava Lamp | Wall of Entropy

Did you know that Cloudflare uses lava lamps to generate cryptographic keys?

In fact, the Cloudflare LavaLamp is a random number generator used by CDN to generate cryptographic keys. It offers a highly unpredictable and entropy-rich source of randomness that helps generate secure cryptographic keys.

The Lava Lamp hardware consists of a wall of lava lamps. Furthermore, each of these lamps is connected to a computer to capture the random patterns created by the movement of the wax, oil, and water inside the lamps.

These patterns are then used as a source of randomness for cryptographic operations, like generating SSL/TLS keys for secure web connections. Furthermore, Lava Lamp helps improve the security of Cloudflare’s services, as well as the security of websites and applications that rely on those services.

How Does Cloudflare Lava Lamp work

Let’s take a look at how Cloudflare Lava lamp works. Each time we log in to any website, we are assigned a unique identification number. This has to be a random number to prevent hackers from predicting the number and impersonating us.

Computers cannot predict the patterns formed by the oil, water, and wax in lava lamps. Hence, Cloudflare films the lamps 24/7. It uses the always-changing arrangement to create a powerful cryptographic key.

These lava lamps are placed in the lobby of Cloudflare headquarters. It is known as the Wall of Entropy. This might prompt the question that does this make it accessible to anyone with an intention of hacking these random numbers. However, the computers capture the lava lamp moment as well as other movements including visitor movement, light streaming through the windows, and so on.

Furthermore, it adds the movements of a pendulum in its London office and the measurements of a Geiger counter in Singapore to ensure a truly random number. Hence, it results in powerful cryptographic keys that are extremely hard to crack.

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Conclusion

To sum up, our Support Techs introduced s to Cloudflare Lava Lamps and how they help generate random numbers.