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Quantum Leap: Scientists Slash Atom Superposition Time by 10,000x

Working with the Quantum Statistical Physics (PQS) group, Dengis developed a protocol for rapidly generating NOON states. “These states, which look like miniature versions of Schrödinger’s famous cat, are quantum superpositions,” he explains. “They are of major interest for technologies such as ultra-precise quantum sensors or quantum computers.”

The obstacle of time

The main challenge? Manufacturing these states normally takes far too long. We’re talking tens of minutes or more, which often exceeds the lifetime of the experiment. The cause? An energy bottleneck, a “sharp bend” in the system’s evolution that forces it to slow down.

Ripple’s xrpl.js npm Package Backdoored to Steal Private Keys in Major Supply Chain Attack

The Ripple cryptocurrency npm JavaScript library named xrpl.js has been compromised by unknown threat actors as part of a software supply chain attack designed to harvest and exfiltrate users’ private keys.

The malicious activity has been found to affect five different versions of the package: 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, and 2.14.2. The issue has been addressed in versions 4.2.5 and 2.14.3.

Microsoft Secures MSA Signing with Azure Confidential VMs Following Storm-0558 Breach

Microsoft on Monday announced that it has moved the Microsoft Account (MSA) signing service to Azure confidential virtual machines (VMs) and that it’s also in the process of migrating the Entra ID signing service as well.

The disclosure comes about seven months after the tech giant said it completed updates to Microsoft Entra ID and MS for both public and United States government clouds to generate, store, and automatically rotate access token signing keys using the Azure Managed Hardware Security Module (HSM) service.

“Each of these improvements helps mitigate the attack vectors that we suspect the actor used in the 2023 Storm-0558 attack on Microsoft,” Charlie Bell, Executive Vice President for Microsoft Security, said in a post shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication.

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