Lifeboat Foundation

Beautiful future lays ahead in QC.

Quantum physics not only explains how matter behaves at the subatomic level, but is also used to create many devices in our everyday lives, from lasers and transistors to GPS and mobile phones. The next wave of innovation could lead to unbreakable encryption and computers that are up to one million times faster. On 6 April, Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) unit organised a workshop to discuss with experts the potential of these new quantum technologies.

Exploiting the quirks of the quantum world

Continue reading “Quantum technologies: from mobile phones to supercomputers” »

DARPA’s “Squad X” uses Android tablets, encrypted real-time communication, and Artificial Intelligence to save lives.

Nice

A new method of implementing an ‘unbreakable’ quantum cryptographic system is able to transmit information at rates more than ten times faster than previous attempts.

A new method of implementing an ‘unbreakable’ quantum cryptographic system is able to transmit information at rates more than ten times faster than previous attempts.

Researchers have developed a new method to overcome one of the main issues in implementing a quantum cryptography system, raising the prospect of a useable ‘unbreakable’ method for sending sensitive information hidden inside particles of light.

By ‘seeding’ one laser beam inside another, the researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Toshiba Research Europe, have demonstrated that it is possible to distribute encryption keys at rates between two and six orders of magnitude higher than earlier attempts at a real-world quantum cryptography system. The results are reported in the journal Nature Photonics.

Continue reading “Laser technique promises super-fast and super-secure quantum cryptography” »

Imagine mastering instruments, learning to tango and becoming fluent in French — in months, weeks, even days. No, it’s not science fiction: A new program by the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to tweak your nervous system to make you learn better and faster.

The goal of the new DARPA program, called Targeted Neuroplasticity Training, is to stimulate your peripheral nervous system, the network of nerves on the outside of your brain and spinal cord, to facilitate the development of cognitive skills. If it works, TNT could become a faster and cheaper way to train people on foreign languages, intelligence analysis, cryptography and more.

A quantum computer has been built that can find prime factors, potentially signalling the beginning of the end for cryptography that relies on the multiplication of large prime numbers, such as RSA encryption.

I do believe we’re within a 7 to 8 yr window at this point with Quantum hitting the broader main stream computing infrastructure. However, we have banks in Europe that have been using the technology for network communications, Los Alamos Labs experimenting since late 2011 with Quantum Internet, now China is launching their own Quantum Satellite for wireless communications; so I do suggest a strategy needs to be developed over the next 2 to 3 yrs for government & industry around how to manage & plan for deployment of Quantum especially with China & Russia’s interest.

New research demonstrating that quantum computing is now just an engineering challenge moves the possibility of encryption-cracking machines to the front burner.

Let’s just hypothesize a little on this topic: let’s say Apple goes ahead and gives in to the US Government and enables government to access the phone’s info. Does Apple have any protection in the future from lawsuits from it’s customers in situations where their own customers information is hacked by criminals and published to the world or used for illegal activities? Because I do see in the future more lawsuits coming at the tech companies for not ensuring their platforms and devices are un-hackable. So, if the government has its way; what protections does tech have now with any future lawsuits by consumers and other businesses?

His comments come during the ongoing legal battle over an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the individuals responsible for the San Bernardino, Calif. mass shooting December 2. “I don’t think requiring backdoors with encryption is either going to be an effective way to increase security or is really the right thing to do for just the direction that the world is going to”.

This is because First Amendment treats computer code as speech and according to Apple, meeting the demands of the government would be equivalent to “compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination”.

Continue reading “Apple Says the NSA Should Hack San Bernardino Terrorist’s iPhone” »

Much of the encryption world today depends on the challenge of factoring large numbers, but scientists now say they’ve created the first five-atom quantum computer with the potential to crack the security of traditional encryption schemes.

In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or “qubits,” that can be simultaneously 0 and 1 — a state known as a superposition that’s far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they said this week.

Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, the new system promises scalability as well, as more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer able to factor much larger numbers. That, in turn, presents new risks for factorization-based methods such as RSA, used for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data.

Continue reading “MIT’s new 5-atom quantum computer could make today’s encryption obsolete” »