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Category: encryption – Page 41

E xperts are suggesting quantum computing may render blockchain obsolete. As the tech giants such as Google and IBM are showing interest in Quantum computing the danger is evident. According to MIT Technology Review, this type of computing can hack the cryptography hash that universally secures the blockchain and in general the internet. This would suggest quantum computers may complete fraudulent transactions and steal coins. With its exponential power, quantum computers threaten blockchain’s future security.

Blockchain consists of encrypted nodes connected on a chain, which currently makes it almost impossible to hack. The order of entries adheres to the blockchain protocol, which makes it counterfeit-resistant.

To successfully hack a blockchain, you would need to alter both the targeted block and all of the blocks connected. Blockchains are synced throughout a peer-to-peer network. In this type of system, there is no central point of failure for hackers to penetrate. For a hacker to have a chance of penetrating the network, they would need to simultaneously alter at least 51% of the blockchain.

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Machine-learning technology is growing ever more accessible. Let’s not have a 9/11-style ‘failure of imagination’ about it.

There is a general tendency among counterterrorism analysts to understate rather than hyperbolize terrorists’ technological adaptations. In 2011 and 2012, most believed that the “Arab Spring” revolutions would marginalize jihadist movements. But within four years, jihadists had attracted a record number of foreign fighters to the Syrian battlefield, in part by using the same social media mobilization techniques that protesters had employed to challenge dictators like Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar Qaddafi.

Militant groups later combined easy accessibility to operatives via social media with new advances in encryption to create the “virtual planner” model of terrorism. This model allows online operatives to provide the same offerings that were once the domain of physical networks, including recruitment, coordinating the target and timing of attacks, and even providing technical assistance on topics like bomb-making.

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There are certain classes of technology that, by their nature, put those who possess their secrets in danger: Nuclear weapons. Ballistic missiles. Advanced encryption software.

Now, add unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—to that list.

A Palestinian electrical engineer who had published research on drones was assassinated in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall). A helmeted person on a motorcycle fired 10 shots at 35 year-old Fadi al-Batsh, killing him as he walked to a mosque for morning prayers.

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Sometimes sensitive data, like passwords or keys that unlock encrypted communications, are accidentally left open for anybody to see. It’s happened everywhere from the Republican National Committee to Verizon, and as long as information can be public on the internet the trend isn’t going to stop.

But researchers at software infrastructure firm Pivotal have taught AI to locate this accidentally public sensitive information in a surprising way: By looking at the code as if it were a picture. Since modern artificial intelligence is arguably better than humans at identifying minute differences in images, telling the difference between a password and normal code for a computer is just like recognizing a dog from a cat.

The best way to check whether private passwords or sensitive information has been left public today is to use hand-coded rules called “regular expressions.” These rules tell a computer to find any string of characters that meets specific criteria, like length and included characters. But passwords are all different, and this method means that the security engineer has to anticipate every kind of private data they want to guard against.

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Locking up super-secret information with digital encryption has become even more secure with the production of numbers that aren’t just ‘nearly random’, but are truly unpredictable in every sense of the word.

Using the data generated by a three-year-old experiment on quantum entanglement, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently generated codes that are guaranteed to be one of a kind, and it could set a new landmark in communications.

On one level, randomness is an easy thing to grasp. We flip coins, roll dice, and pick cards with a basic sense that the outcome can’t be easily predicted.

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It has no inherent value and causes observers to rotate between feelings of fascination and anger. We’re talking about cryptocurrency, but also art. In a new series, artist Andy Bauch is bringing the two subjects together with works that use abstract patterns constructed in Lego bricks. Each piece visually represents the private key to a crypto-wallet, and anyone can steal that digital cash—if you can decode them.

Bauch first started playing around with cryptocurrencies in 2013 and told us in an interview that he considers himself an enthusiast but not a “rabid promoter” of the technology. “I wasn’t smart enough to buy enough to have fuck-you money,” he said. In 2016, he started to integrate his Bitcoin interest with his art practice.

His latest series of work, New Money, opens at LA’s Castelli Art Space on Friday. Bauch says that each piece in the series “is a secret key to various types of cryptocurrency.” He bought various amounts of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other alt-coins in 2016 and put them in different digital wallets. Each wallet is encrypted with a private key that consists of a string of letters and numbers. That key was initially fed into an algorithm to generate a pattern. Then Bauch tweaked the algorithm here and there to get it to spit out an image that appealed to him. After finalizing the works, he’s rigorously tested them in reverse to ensure that they do, indeed, give you the right private key when processed through his formula.

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The power of quantum technology in 2018: how does this develop nowadays

Quantum technology is a new field in physics, derived from quantum physics and, especially, quantum mechanics and it transposes their principles into every day use applications such as quantum computers, quantum cryptography or quantum imaging. Ever since the study of quantum technology has been taking very seriously across the globe, a lot of new technologies and applications were developed to make our lives easier, faster and more secure.

Quantum technology still needs to be promoted.

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