Lifeboat Foundation

The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 16 reported that China sent the world’s first quantum communications satellite into orbit. The newspaper also stated that China spent $101 billion in 2015 on quantum research and technology development. The satellite has the ability to greatly expand China’s ability to expand their unhackable communications.

Now we in the U.S. read almost daily about some U.S. computer system that has been hacked. Our current technology cannot be considered secure. So what is our government investing in?

According to the GAO, the U.S. spent over $10 billion on global climate change science and technology in 2014. Gave $400 million to Iran for who knows what, and spent about $200 million on quantum technology.

Continue reading “Letter: U.S. lags far behind China in quantum computing technology” »

There is a computing revolution coming, although nobody knows exactly when. What are known as “quantum computers” will be substantially more powerful than the devices we use today, capable of performing many types of computation that are impossible on modern machines.

But while faster computers are usually welcome, there are some computing operations that we currently rely on being hard (or slow) to perform.

Specifically, we rely on the fact that there are some codes that computers can’t break – or at least it would take them too long to break to be practical. Encryption algorithms scramble data into a form that renders it unintelligible to anyone that does not possess the necessary decryption key (normally a long string of random numbers).

Continue reading “How quantum computers will change the world of hacking” »

I have been seeing this for the recent weeks; I find it interesting and another step in China’s own move to be a global leader of tech. Could be either good or bad in the longer term.

China is taking a more inclusive tack in instituting cybersecurity standards for foreign technology companies, allowing them to join a key government committee in an effort to ease foreign concerns over the controls.

The committee under the government’s powerful cyberspace administration is in charge of defining cybersecurity standards. For the first time, the body earlier this year allowed select foreign companies— Microsoft Corp. MSFT −0.39 %, Intel Corp. INTC 0.43 %, Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO 0.14 % and International Business Machines Corp.—to take an active part in drafting rules, rather than participating simply as observers, said people familiar with the discussions.

Continue reading “China Sets New Tone in Drafting Cybersecurity Rules” »

Interesting read on IPC Systems Inc. is partnering with U.K. startup Post-Quantum to (in their own words) “offer its clients encryption, biometric authentication and a distributed-ledger record-keeping system that the software company says is designed to resist hacking — even by a quantum computer.” — I will be researching this more.

(Bloomberg) — When it comes to cybersecurity, no one can accuse IPC Systems Inc., the New Jersey-based company that builds communications networks for trading firms and financial markets, of preparing to fight the last war.

Hmmmm.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps should advance the way they use unmanned systems, favoring greater autonomy over remotely-controlled missions and developing multi-vehicle systems such as swarms and cascaded operations, according to a recently released report by the Defense Science Board.

The DSB report, requested by the Pentagon’s acquisition chief in November 2014, notes a variety of Pentagon-wide challenges in developing, testing, fielding and operating autonomous systems, such as operator trust, cyber security and developing a test and evaluation plan for learning systems.

Continue reading “Board Recommends Further Use Of Autonomy In Sea Control, Support Of Ground Troops” »

I can honestly say that many of us working with QC hasn’t warned folks for a while on the hacking risks around QC going against even today’s most sophisticated encryption models & methods; and to be developing a strategy in how to best handle this risk. With last weeks launch by China has shown the world that we are definitely not a decade away from this risk.

Education and planning are key, cyber-security expert Tyler Cohen Wood says.

Very true point.

With the launch of the world’s first quantum communication satellite, the era of unhackable communication has begun.

Glad defense is finally taking this seriously. Something, that many of us already had concerns about.

The properties of quantum entanglement could deliver the first hack-proof communications.

China 2 yr Quantum Communication program’s goal is to reliably transmit ‘unhackable’ keys from space to the ground through quantum entanglement.

China has been the first country to utilize quantum technologies within their satellites in order to mitigate the threats from cyber attacks in their country.