Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: encryption – Page 15

In a new Physical Review Letters study, scientists have successfully presented a proof of concept to demonstrate a randomness-free test for quantum correlations and non-projective measurements, offering a groundbreaking alternative to traditional quantum tests that rely on random inputs.

“Quantum correlation” is a fundamental phenomenon in and one that is central to quantum applications like communication, cryptography, computing, and information processing.

Bell’s inequality, or Bell’s theory, named after physicist John Stewart Bell, is the standard test used to determine the nature of correlation. However, one of the challenges with using Bell’s theorem is the requirement of seed for selecting measurement settings.

Read more | >

This surreal scenario is what would actually happen if the traffic light was a single atom illuminated by a laser beam, as recently shown experimentally by researchers in Berlin. They looked at the light scattered by an atom and saw that photons—the tiniest particles of light—arrived at the detector one at a time. The scientists blocked the brightest color they saw, and suddenly pairs of photons of two slightly different colors started arriving at their detector simultaneously. They reported their findings in Nature Photonics in July.

The reason for this counterintuitive effect is that single atoms are skilled little multitaskers. Through different underlying processes, they can scatter a variety of colors at the same time like a dangerous traffic light that shines all three colors at once. Yet because of quantum interference between these processes, an observer only sees one of the metaphorical traffic light’s colors at a time, preserving peace on the road.

This experiment also paves the way for novel quantum information applications. When the brightest color is blocked, the photons that pop up simultaneously are entangled with each other, behaving in sync even when they are separated over large distances. This provides a new tool for quantum communication and information processing in which entangled photon pairs can serve as distributed keys in quantum cryptography or store information in a quantum memory device.

Read more | >

One of the most well-established and disruptive uses for a future quantum computer is the ability to crack encryption. A new algorithm could significantly lower the barrier to achieving this.

Despite all the hype around quantum computing, there are still significant question marks around what quantum computers will actually be useful for. There are hopes they could accelerate everything from optimization processes to machine learning, but how much easier and faster they’ll be remains unclear in many cases.

One thing is pretty certain though: A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could render our leading cryptographic schemes worthless. While the mathematical puzzles underpinning them are virtually unsolvable by classical computers, they would be entirely tractable for a large enough quantum computer. That’s a problem because these schemes secure most of our information online.

Read more | >

Its Outline VPN can now be built directly into apps—making it harder for governments to block internet access, particularly during protests.

Google is launching new anti-censorship technology created in response to actions by Iran’s government during the 2022 protests there, hoping that it will increase access for internet users living under authoritarian regimes all over the world.

Jigsaw, a unit of Google that operates sort of like an internet freedom think tank and that creates related products, already offers a suite of anti-censorship tools including Outline, which provides free, open, and encrypted access to the internet through a VPN. Outline uses a protocol that makes it hard to… More.

Read more | >

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing have used machine learning to perform error correction for quantum computers—a crucial step for making these devices practical—using an autonomous correction system that despite being approximate, can efficiently determine how best to make the necessary corrections.

The research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In contrast to , which operate on bits that can only take the basic values 0 and 1, quantum computers operate on “qubits”, which can assume any superposition of the computational basis states. In combination with , another quantum characteristic that connects different qubits beyond classical means, this enables quantum computers to perform entirely new operations, giving rise to potential advantages in some computational tasks, such as large-scale searches, , and cryptography.

Read more | >

Perovskite light-emitting diode is used as the light source for a quantum random number generator used in encryption.

Encryption plays an important role in protecting information in this digital era, and a random number generator plays a vital part in this by providing keys that are used to both encrypt and unlock the information at the receiving end.

Now, a team of researchers has made use of light-emitting diodes made from the crystal-like material perovskite to devise a new type of Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) that can be used for encryption but also for betting and computer simulations.

Read more | >

O.o!!!

Polymorphic malware leverages an encryption key to alter its shape, signature, and behavioral pattern. Using a mutation engine and a self-propagated code strain, it encrypts its code and changes how physical files are created. Many traditional cybersecurity solutions that rely on signature-based detection—a technique in which security systems identify a malware based on its known characteristics—fail to recognize or detect polymorphic threats.

A polymorphic attack typically involves the following stages.

Read more | >

Digital information exchange can be safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly with the help of a new type of random number generator for encryption developed at Linköping University, Sweden. The researchers behind the study believe that the new technology paves the way for a new type of quantum communication.

In an increasingly connected world, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important to protect not just the individual, but also, for example, national infrastructure and banking systems. And there is an ongoing race between hackers and those trying to protect information. The most common way to protect information is through encryption. So when we send emails, pay bills and shop online, the information is digitally encrypted.

To encrypt information, a is used, which can either be a computer program or the hardware itself. The random number generator provides keys that are used to both encrypt and unlock the information at the receiving end.

Read more | >

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have successfully developed a new way to produce a specific type of photon that could prove critical for quantum data exchange, notably encryption. The specific kind of photons, called “circularly polarized light,” have thus far proved challenging to create and control, but this new technique makes the process easier and, importantly, cheaper. This was achieved, the team explains, by stacking two different, atomically thin materials to “twist” (polarize) photons in a predictable fashion.

Encoded, “twisted,” photons

“Our research shows that it is possible for a monolayer semiconductor to emit circularly polarized light without the help of an external magnetic field,” explained Han Htoon, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This effect has only been achieved before with high magnetic fields created by bulky superconducting magnets, by coupling quantum emitters to very complex nanoscale photonics structures, or by injecting spin-polarized carriers into quantum emitters. Our proximity-effect approach has the advantage of low-cost fabrication and reliability,” he added.

Read more | >

• Encryption and segmentation: These operate on the assumption some fraction of the network is already compromised. Restricting the reach and utility of any captured data and accessible networks will mitigate the damage even on breached systems.

• SBOM documentation: Regulatory compliance can be driven by industry organizations and the government, but it will take time to establish standards. SBOM documentation is an essential foundation for best practices.

If “democracy dies in darkness,” and that includes lies of omission in reporting, then cybersecurity suffers the same fate with backdoors. The corollary is “don’t roll your own crypto” even if well-intentioned. The arguments for weakening encryption to make law enforcement easier falls demonstrably flat, with TETRA just the latest example. Secrets rarely stay that way forever, and sensitive data is more remotely accessible than at any time in history. Privacy and global security affect us all, and the existence of these single points of failure in our cybersecurity efforts are unsustainable and will have unforeseeable consequences. We need to innovate and evolve the internet away from this model to have durable security assurances.

Read more | >