Lifeboat Foundation

LONDON The attack on a Berlin Christmas market showed the devastation that can be wrought by the simple act of driving a truck into crowds, and the problems in preventing another massacre.

The attack in Germany on Monday, in which 11 people were killed by the truck in addition to the murder of the Polish driver, mirrored a militant raid in the French city of Nice in July that killed 86.

Hauliers increasingly track their vehicles in real time but security experts say the technology cannot be used to stop an attack if a lorry has been hijacked to be used as a weapon.

Your daily round-up of some of the other security stories in the news

Groupon grief – was it password reuse?

The Telegraph reports that crooks have hijacked a number of Groupon accounts and used them to purchase expensive items like games consoles, iPhones and holidays. Some victims have suffered thousands of pounds of losses.

Continue reading “News in brief: Groupon grief; Apple encryption delay; post-quantum crypto” »

RIP dear friend.

A giant in the worlds of both academia and policy, Drell died Wednesday, Dec. 21, at his home in Palo Alto. He was 90 years old.

“An accomplished physicist, his contributions to improve national and international security made our world a better place,” said Tom Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford in a statement. “We are especially grateful for Sid’s relentless dedication to eliminating the threat posed by nuclear weapons and know that his important work will continue to frame the issue.”

Continue reading “Sidney Drell, Stanford theoretical physicist and national security expert, dies at 90” »

More folks warning others that you better be planning for a QC transformation as it is coming and is going to be probably the largest scale transformation the we have seen in the history of technology.

Former communications minister, Stephen Conroy has warned that Australian government technology decision makers need to start preparing for the development of quantum computing.

The former senator made the warning during a panel session at the Australian Computer Society’s Reimagination conference late last week. While still in its nascent development stages, the former minister for broadband communications and the digital economy said that it could have major national security implications.

Continue reading “Conroy’s quantum warning: be ready” »

DARPA sees a real possibility for spaced based conflict. So, it’s hoping to create breakthrough technology to dissuade U.S. adversaries who might consider attacking from space.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency assists national security with efforts in space. It focuses on making space a “real-time operational domain,” as DARPA Director Dr. Arati Prabhakar recently said.

“The questions we ask ourselves at DARPA about the space domain … is what would it take to make the space domain robust for everything that we need militarily and for intelligence, and what would it take to make space a real-time operational domain, which it’s not at all today,” the director said last week at the 4th annual Defense One Summit. Many nation-states now orbit the Earth. Conflict is a real possibility, believes Prabhakar.

In 5 years if you’re looking at QC in your future state roadmap; then welcome to the dinosaur age of technology.

BEIJING: China today launched a 712-km quantum communication line, stated to be the worlds longest secure telecommunications network, which boasts of ultra-high security making it impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through them.

The new quantum communication line links Hefei, capital of Anhui province, to Shanghai, the countrys financial hub.

Continue reading “China Launches World’s Longest Quantum Communication Line” »

Terahertz (THz) radiation is used today most prominently for security screening at the airport. It’s the machine you stand in with your hands up as it swings its scanning arms in front and behind you. In medicine, terahertz imaging has the potential to help diagnoze certain types of cancer and to monitor a variety of health parameters to aid in assessment of overall health. Because of the extremely short length of terahertz waves, this imaging modality has a lot of limitations, including shallow penetration into tissues, and that prevents it from being used more widely. Yet, since it’s non-ionising, it’s probably safe and may even replace dangerous X-rays for some applications.

Currently, terahertz imaging is very poor at scanning curved surfaces even though it can peer a few millimeters deep into some tissues. To overcome this, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a flexible and even wearable terahertz scanner that can image curved 3D surfaces such as our skin.

Continue reading “Carbon Nanotube Array Opens Door for Terahertz Radiation in Medical Practice” »

No autonomous cars, planes, ships, weapons (not sure I would even still want these), and other robots for me until we have our Net and other infrastructure replaced with QC.

It seems that all of Silicon Valley is designing artificial intelligence for driverless cars. But before we hand over our driving to computers, Charlie Miller, a well-known computer security researcher, would like car companies to pay attention to security.

Continue reading “Before you sign up for a self-driving car, pay attention to hacker Charlie Miller” »

Telegram has announced the first winners of its bot competition. The BotPrize was announced in April and will see $1 million awarded to developers of the best Telegram bots submitted. The first winners come from the worlds of photo-editing, productivity, games, dating and finance.

Telegram is a messaging service with a focus on speed and security. Launched in 2013, it is cloud-based, meaning that user content syncs instantly across the platforms on which the service can be used, including PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

The firm’s BotPrize will help to increase the number of bots available on the service and accelerate the speed with which the number is increased. For the uninitiated, bots are effectively apps in themselves with which users can interact via messaging. They typically run inside messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or, in this instance, Telegram.