Computer security specialists had hoped Go-playing AI agents would be immune to adversarial attacks. Now it’s back to the drawing board.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that the safe operation of a negative pressure room—a space in a hospital or biological research laboratory designed to protect outside areas from exposure to deadly pathogens—can be disrupted by an attacker armed with little more than a smartphone.
According to UCI cyber-physical systems security experts, who shared their findings with attendees at the Association for Computing Machinery’s recent Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Los Angeles, mechanisms that control airflow in and out of biocontainment facilities can be tricked into functioning irregularly by a sound of a particular frequency, possibly tucked surreptitiously into a popular song.
“Someone could play a piece of music loaded on their smartphone or get it to transmit from a television or other audio device in or near a negative pressure room,” said senior co-author Mohammad Al Faruque, UCI professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “If that music is embedded with a tone that matches the resonant frequency of the pressure controls of one of these spaces, it could cause a malfunction and a leak of deadly microbes.”
Machine learning programs mean even encrypted information can give cybercriminals insight into your daily habits.
Smart technology claims to make our lives easier. You can turn on your lights, lock your front door remotely and even adjust your thermostat with the click of a button.
But new research from the University of Georgia suggests that convenience potentially comes at a cost—your personal security.
The community will offer eight different floor plans, ranging from three to four bedrooms and two to three bathrooms. Homes will be powered by rooftop solar panels, include a Ring Video Doorbell Pro, Schlage Encode Smart WiFi deadbolt, a Honeywell Home T6 Pro WiFi smart thermostat and a Wolf Ranch security package.
RELATED: The Georgetown gem that gleams rich with history: Southwestern University
Continue reading “Reservations for new community of 3D homes in Georgetown to open in 2023” »
A security source has told Sky News that Russia flew €140m in cash to Tehran in exchange for dozens of deadly “suicide drones”.
Moscow also included Western weapons it had captured in Ukraine in the shipment.
Continue reading “Ukraine War: Russia gave Iran cash and captured UK & US weapons for drones” »
With the help of NASA and Japan, Uganda has officially become a spacefaring nation — and its newly-launched PearlAfricaSat-1 craft has some pretty nifty tech onboard.
As the Uganda-based Nile Post reports, the satellite launched out of NASA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport facility in Virginia on the morning of November 7 will not only provide important agricultural and security monitoring features for the developing nation, but will also conduct experiments involving the 3D printing of human tissue.
Per the Ugandan news site, the tissues printed on PearlAfricaSat-1 will be used in research into the effects microgravity has on ovary function — and as Quartz notes in its write-up of the NASA and Japan-supported mission, the microgravity aspect of the experiments is key because “bioprinting” human organs is difficult to achieve with Earth’s gravity.
When Courtney “CJ” Johnson pulls up footage from her Ph.D. dissertation, it’s like she’s watching an attempted break-in on a home security camera.
The intruder cases its target without setting a foot inside, looking for a point of entry. But this intruder is not your typical burglar. It’s a virus.
Continue reading “Watch a virus in the moments right before it attacks” »
In 1994, the computer scientist Peter Shor discovered that if quantum computers were ever invented, they would decimate much of the infrastructure used to protect information shared online. That frightening possibility has had researchers scrambling to produce new, “post-quantum” encryption schemes, to save as much information as they could from falling into the hands of quantum hackers.
Earlier this year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology revealed four finalists in its search for a post-quantum cryptography standard. Three of them use “lattice cryptography” — a scheme inspired by lattices, regular arrangements of dots in space.
Lattice cryptography and other post-quantum possibilities differ from current standards in crucial ways. But they all rely on mathematical asymmetry. The security of many current cryptography systems is based on multiplication and factoring: Any computer can quickly multiply two numbers, but it could take centuries to factor a cryptographically large number into its prime constituents. That asymmetry makes secrets easy to encode but hard to decode.
A series of demonstrations by Micius—a low-orbit satellite with quantum capabilities—lays the groundwork for a satellite-based quantum communication network.
Few things have captured the scientific imagination quite like the vastness of space and the promise of quantum technology. Micius—the Chinese Academy of Science’s quantum communications satellite launched in 2016—has connected these two inspiring domains, producing a string of exciting first demonstrations in quantum space communications. Reviewing the efforts leading up to the satellite launch and the major outcomes of the mission, Jian-Wei Pan and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China provide a perspective on what the future of quantum space communications may look like [1]. The success of this quantum-satellite mission proves the viability of several space-based quantum communications protocols, providing a solid foundation for future improvements that may lead to an Earth-spanning quantum communications network (Fig. 1).
Photons, the quanta of light, are wonderful carriers of quantum information because they are easy to manipulate and travel extremely fast. They can be created in a desired quantum state or as the output of some quantum sensor or quantum computer. Quantum entanglement between multiple photons—the nonclassical correlation between their quantum states—can be amazingly useful in quantum communications protocols such as quantum key distribution (QKD), a cryptography approach that can theoretically guarantee absolute information security. QKD schemes have been demonstrated on distances of a few hundreds of kilometers—sufficient to cover communications networks between cities. But increasing their range, eventually to the global scale, is a formidable challenge.
Terahertz light, radiation in the far-infrared part of the emission spectrum, is currently not fully exploited in technology, although it shows great potential for many applications in sensing, homeland security screening, and future (sixth generation) mobile networks.
Indeed, this radiation is harmless due to its small photon energy, but it can penetrate many materials (such as skin, packaging, etc.). In the last decade, a number of research groups have focused their attention on identifying techniques and materials to efficiently generate THz electromagnetic waves: among them is the wonder material graphene, which, however, does not provide the desired results. In particular, the generated terahertz output power is limited.
Better performance has now been achieved by topological insulators (TIs)—quantum materials that behave as insulators in the bulk while exhibiting conductive properties on the surface—according to a paper recently published in Light: Science & Applications.
