A true random number generator based on mouse movement and chaotic cryptography

True random number generators are in general more secure than pseudo random number generators. In this paper, we propose a novel true random number generator which generates a 256-bit random number by computer mouse movement. It is cheap, convenient and universal for personal computers. To eliminate the effect of similar movement patterns generated by the same user, three chaos-based approaches, namely, discretized 2D chaotic map permutation, spatiotemporal chaos and "MASK" algorithm, are adopted to post-process the captured mouse movements. Random bits generated by three users are tested using NIST statistical tests. Both the spatiotemporal chaos approach and the "MASK" algorithm pass the tests successfully. However, the latter has a better performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and so is more practical for common personal computer applications. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.