Encrypting Data with…Lava Lamps?

This month at STEMpowerment Innovation, we have spoken a lot about how encryption is used in our daily lives to keep our data safe. Whether it be hiding your emails from lurking eyes on the internet or keeping your credit card number secure from eerie hackers during a transaction, encryption finds its way into most aspects of our digital life without us even noticing. So yeah, encryption is basically everywhere, but in this article we are going to look at an extremely outlandish way one company encrypts data: with lava lamps. But, you may be wondering, how can lava lamps possibly lead to encryption?

First of all, it must be defined that encryption’s foundation is randomness. Without the element of randomness in encryption, the process would be ineffective. The interesting thing is that since encryption is often driven by human-made code, it can never be truly random. There will always be a certain pattern in human encryption that another human (i.e. a hacker) could maliciously decrypt. Thankfully, man-made code is often random enough that hackers still struggle to break through and compromise your information. However, improvements are always looking to be made when it comes to data safety, and an increase in code entropy is the primary driver in strengthening encryption algorithms¹. Algorithms like the Data Encryption Standard (DES) are now viewed as too easy to break through with patterns that lack code length and randomness, while an algorithm that superseded DES, in Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), is able to better keep data better hidden and encrypted from evil eyes by improving on the shortcomings of its predecessor. Ok so all this talk about algorithms and randomness sounds great, but what do lava lamps have to do about it?

The thing about a lava lamp is that unlike human code, it is fueled by pure randomness. Cloudflare, an internet security company in San Francisco, takes advantage of the unpredictable swirling shapes which appear in lava lamps. Cloudflare jumped on the fact that the shapes created in a lava lamp are always unique, thus they could serve as a nearly unbreakable cryptographic key. The company owns what is called the Cloudflare lobby, where they take 24/7 images of a wall of 100 lava lamps that are constantly on and have their liquid in motion [1]. These images serve as cryptographic keys used to keep information on the internet indecipherable to hackers trying to view private data in an unsolicited fashion. Even visitors who may walk in front of the wall and affect the images of the lava lamps are incorporated into the companies cryptography. Cloudflare justifies this by considering accidental human interference as another part of the natural and random cycle which makes their encryption keys that much harder to decrypt. Interesting, right?

This innovative use of an item which is conventionally seen as a decoration in the room of a 13-year-old angsty teen simply shows how far we must go to keep our digital lives free from potential dangers. The coolest part is that Cloudflare only protects about 10% of the internet [3], which means the doors of creativity are only slightly ajar. The potential for discovery in the field of cryptography is endless, and with the exponential growth of the digital world, it feels inevitable that we see another invention such as lava lamp encryption.

If you would like to learn some more about this wacky form of encryption consider checking out this website: https://www.zmescience.com/other/pieces/how-lava-lamps-encrypt-10-of-the-internet/ and take a look at our citations for more.

[1] An encryption algorithm is a method that develops an encryption key which randomizes plaintext into ciphertext and vice versa, thus encrypting the data

About Us

STEMpowerment Innovation is an organization aiming to educate children and teens passionate about STEM, and the various fields within it. It holds events, programs, competitions, and writes articles like this to spread knowledge about our world and help advance students throughout the world.

Citations

1. Airhart, E. (2018, August 01). How Cloudflare Uses Lava Lamps to Guard Against Hackers. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-lava-lamps-protect-from-hackers/
2. Blank, L. (2017, December 28). This Wall of Lava Lamps Helps Encrypt the Internet. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/encryption-lava-lamps
3. Micu, A. (2020, February 13). How lava lamps encrypt 10% of the internet. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.zmescience.com/other/pieces/how-lava-lamps-encrypt-10-of-the-internet/
4. Welch, C. (2019, June 13). How lava lamps are contributing to internet security. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.kgun9.com/news/national/how-lava-lamps-are-contributing-to-internet-security-through-cryptography