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BT and Toshiba have deployed an ‘unhackable’ quantum network that uses streams of photons to encrypt sensitive communications.
A trial of the network, which is the first of its kind in the UK, will see data transmitted between two engineering facilities in Bristol using encryption keys streamed as ‘encoded’ particles of light.
The world is one step closer to having a totally secure internet and an answer to the growing threat of cyber-attacks, thanks to a team of international scientists who have created a unique prototype that could transform how we communicate online.
The invention led by the University of Bristol, revealed today in the journal Science Advances, has the potential to serve millions of users, is understood to be the largest-ever quantum network of its kind, and could be used to secure people’s online communication, particularly in these internet-led times accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
DARPA announces a new type of cryptography to protect the Big Tech firm profits from the dawn of quantum computers and allow backdoor access into 3 trillion internet-connected devices.
by Raul Diego
The U.S. Military-Industrial complex is sprinting on a chariot to shore up the encryption space before the next era of computation upends the entire digital edifice built on semiconductors and transistors. But, the core of the effort is protecting markets for Big Tech and all of its tentacles, which stand to lose years or even decades of profits should the new tech be rolled out too quickly.
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Millions of us use Bluetooth wireless communications every day—to make phone calls when driving, with our fitness trackers, streaming at work or play. Innocent enough, seemingly. But no technology comes without a warning: a recently discovered Bluetooth vulnerability allows hackers to spy on your conversations or take control of your smart phone. The vulnerability deals with the encryption between two devices. It even has a name—a KNOB hack (Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth).
This is not the first time Bluetooth has been hacked and it likely won’t be the last. And this one has its limitations. To take advantage of the KNOB vulnerability the hacker has to be in close proximity of your phone. There is also currently no evidence that this vulnerability has been exploited maliciously.
Still, for the sake of cyber hygiene, take the following steps to protect yourself from a KNOB hack: • Install updates for your smart phone as they become available. • Remove devices paired with your phone that you no longer need or recognize. • Turn off Bluetooth when you are not using it.
Safe Messaging
Cybersecurity experts have long warned that quantum computers, whenever it is that they become useful, will render useless most conventional forms of encryption. This new satellite experiment, which is described in research published in the journal Nature, suggests that it may be possible to send secure messages yet.
“A remarkable feature of the entanglement-based quantum cryptography as we demonstrated here is that such security is ensured even if the satellite is controlled by an adversary,” University of Science and Technology physicist Jian-Wei Pan told Space.com.
Amid ever-increasing demands for privacy and security for highly sensitive data stored in the cloud, Google Cloud announced this week the creation of Confidential Computing.
Terming it a “breakthrough technology,” Google said the technology, which will offer a number of products in the coming months, allows users to encrypt sensitive data not only as it is stored or sent to the cloud, but while it is being worked on as well.
Confidential Computing keeps data encrypted as it’s being “used, indexed, queried, or trained on” in memory and “elsewhere outside the central processing unit,” Google said in a statement about the new technology.
Digital identity capabilities from Trust Stamp are now being integrated with Mastercard’s Wellness Pass solution, which it will launch in cooperation with Gavi in West Africa. Proving identity without revealing any information about it is the idea behind Trust Stamp’s zero knowledge approach to online identity verification, according to a profile by Mastercard.
Gareth Genner, Trust Stamp co-founder and CEO, explains in an interview how the company’s Evergreen Hash technology uses biometrics without taking on the risk of spoofing or a data breach that he says come with standard biometric implementations.
The Evergreen Hash is created from the customers face, palm or fingerprint biometrics, which the company uses to generate a “3D mask,” discarding raw data and adding encryption to associate the data with the user.
A new system can significantly lower the production costs costs of mass quantum key distribution (QKD) networks, which will make them available to a wider user audience. This will make it possible to use QDK in the regular fiber-optic cable infrastructure. The paper was published in Scientific Reports.
Many have heard about quantum key distribution (QKD), which is also sometimes referred to as quantum encryption. Today, this is one of the safest ways to encode information that can then be used by major banks, military and governmental organizations. In a QDK system, the information is transmitted by quantum radiation, which is extremely hard for eavesdroppers to intercept.
“As a rule, QKD uses a weak laser light with an average number of photons less than unity,” explains Eduard Samsonov, a research associate at ITMO’s Faculty of Photonics and Optical Information. “This light has fundamental special features, the so-called quantum effects that leave no chance for a third party to infiltrate the channel to read the information without being noticed.”
July 13, 2020—Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Montana State University report today that they have found that placing sufficient strain in a 2-D material—tungsten diselenide (WSe2)—creates localized states that can yield single-photon emitters. Using sophisticated optical microscopy techniques developed at Columbia over the past three years, the team was able to directly image these states for the first time, revealing that even at room temperature they are highly tunable and act as quantum dots, tightly confined pieces of semiconductors that emit light.
“Our discovery is very exciting, because it means we can now position a single-photon emitter wherever we want, and tune its properties, such as the color of the emitted photon, simply by bending or straining the material at a specific location,” says James Schuck, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who co-led the study published today by Nature Nanotechnology. “Knowing just where and how to tune the single-photon emitter is essential to creating quantum optical circuitry for use in quantum computers, or even in so-called ‘quantum’ simulators that mimic physical phenomena far too complex to model with today’s computers.”
Developing quantum technologies such as quantum computers and quantum sensors is a rapidly developing field of research as researchers figure out how to use the unique properties of quantum physics to create devices that can be much more efficient, faster, and more sensitive than existing technologies. For instance, quantum information—think encrypted messages—would be much more secure.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have determined how to pinpoint the location of a drone operator who may be operating maliciously or harmfully near airports or protected airspace by analyzing the flight path of the drone.
Drones (small commercial unmanned aerial systems) pose significant security risks due to their agility, accessibility and low cost. As a result, there is a growing need to develop methods for detection, localization and mitigation of malicious and other harmful aircraft operation.
The paper, which was led by senior lecturer and drone expert Dr. Gera Weiss from BGU’s Department of Computer Science, was presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Cyber Security, Cryptography and Machine Learning (CSCML 2020) on July 3rd.
