More than a decor: Lava Lamps as a Security Measure

I bet there's a time when we were all visually fascinated by lava lamps.  For the longest time, that was the sole use of lava lamps--as a decorative item.  But, at Cloudfare, a web security company, these decorative items are implemented as a part of the security measure.

Here's how it works, according to Wired:
Every time you log in to any website, you’re assigned a unique identification number. It should be random, because if hackers can predict the number, they’ll impersonate you. Computers, relying as they do on human-coded patterns, can’t generate true randomness—but nobody can predict the goopy mesmeric swirlings of oil, water, and wax. Cloudflare films the lamps 24/7 and uses the ever-changing arrangement of pixels to help create a superpowered cryptographic key. “Anything that the camera captures gets incorporated into the randomness,” says Nick Sullivan, the company’s head of cryptography, and that includes visitors milling about and light streaming through the windows. (Any change in heat subtly affects the undulations of those glistening globules.)

Here's a clip that talks more in-depth about Cloudfare's lava lamp security technology:

I think this is super interesting and is an inverse of what we're doing for Project 3.  It takes a photo of the wall of lava lamps and codes the pixels into a "superpowered" cryptographic key, whereas we have to write down codes to create the image.

With love,

Emily