Inmetro Randomness Beacon

About this page

Currently, they are generated by using a simple Photonic TRNG (True Random Number Generator) method. The key purpose is to define and construct a system based on quantum entanglement for generating the random numbers:

PLEASE, DO NOT USE THE BEACON GENERATED VALUES AS CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS.

Inmetro's Randomness Beacon is a web service, part of the SICCCiber project's effort to generate reliable and public sources of random numbers. Contact us for more details

In addition to the beacon, we developed two application prototypes using VDF. A prototype for combining beacons and a public api where any user can contribute values to generate a new random number. Both can be found here.

The service is available via a public REST API. Consumers need to provide a pulse generation time in POSIX format. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time for more information and http://www.epochconverter.com for an online timestamp converter.

Pulse at a specific time (or next closest):
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/<timestamp>
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/1685624220000

Previous Pulse:
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/previous/<timestamp>
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/previous/1685624220000

Next Pulse :
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/next/<timestamp>
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/next/1685624220000

Last Available Pulse:
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/last
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/pulse/last

First Pulse of the first Chain:
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/chain/1/pulse/1
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br//beacon/2.0/chain/1/pulse/1

Pulse <pulseIndex> in chain <chainIndex>:
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/chain/<chainIndex>/pulse/<pulseIndex>
Example: beacon.inmetro.gov.br//beacon/2.0/chain/1/pulse/1870830

Sequence of Pulses:
beacon.inmetro.gov.br/beacon/2.0/skiplist/time/<startTimestamp>/<endTimestamp>
Example: beacon/2.0/skiplist/time/1685624220000/1685624280000

If a request for a Pulse results in no Pulse found, a 404 response is returned.

Applications

• Inmetro's Combination Beacon is a proposal for combining beacons built on the NISTR reference. The prototype uses Verifiable Delay Funcion(VDF) to combine random numbers from NIST, Chile and Brazil to generate a secure and reliable random number. See more details.
• Inmetro's Unicorn App is a prototype that uses Verifiable Delay Function(VDF). The application allows any user to submit contributions for the publication of the new random number. See more details.