Technology
The architecture behind our hardware entropy pipeline.
Optical Shot Noise Extraction
Our hardware node uses a high-resolution NoIR CMOS sensor enclosed in a light-tight housing. With ambient illumination eliminated, the sensor's output is dominated by photonic shot noise and dark current — physical processes governed by quantum statistics that are fundamentally unpredictable.
We capture this raw signal at the bit level, extract the high-entropy components, and discard the rest. The result is a continuous stream of entropy whose unpredictability rests on physics, not on the secrecy of an algorithm or seed.
NIST Validation Results
- NIST SP 800-22 Rev 1a: 188 / 188 test lines passed across the 15 categories, on a 100 MB conditioned output sample (838 bitstreams of 1 million bits each).
- NIST SP 800-90B: Source min-entropy of 0.6236 bits/bit, measured directly on the raw LSB stream from the sensor (conservative minimum across all 10 non-IID estimators, per NIST convention).
- Security margin: The SHA3-256 conditioning ratio (1024 input bytes → 32 output bytes) yields an effective security margin of ~10× the NIST minimum.
100% Technical Provenance
Every byte we serve is sourced from a physical sensor and conditioned in volatile memory. We do not seed PRNGs to inflate output volume. Quota limits exist precisely because supply is finite and physical.
From Photon to Cryptographic Byte
Each captured frame goes through three deterministic stages on-device. First, LSB extraction: we keep only the least-significant bit of each pixel value, where shot-noise fluctuations dominate. Second, Von Neumann debiasing: pairs of bits are processed so that any residual bit-level bias is removed by construction (01 → 0, 10 → 1, 00 and 11 are discarded). Third, SHA3-256 conditioning: every 1024-byte block of debiased data is hashed into 32 output bytes — a NIST FIPS 202 standard, producing a security margin of ~10× the NIST minimum.
The conditioned stream is buffered on the device and relayed to our Cloud API over authenticated channels with byte-level metering.
[OK] Sensor isolation verified
[OK] Capture pipeline initialized
[INFO] LSB extraction active
[INFO] Von Neumann debiasing active
[INFO] SHA3-256 conditioning active
[OK] Entropy pool filling
[OK] API endpoints ready
[NET] Cloud sync established
[OK] Health: nominal