UK and Singapore set 2021 deadline to launch world’s first quantum communications cubesat
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Unlike traditional communications technologies quantum communications are unhackable, so countries are racing to deploy them. Highly secure global communication based on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), a secure communications cryptographic protocol that’s based on the eerie phenomenon of quantum mechanics, could eventually be made possible...
A year after china beat it the US is getting it’s own hackproof quantum network
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The US is increasingly falling behind China in the development of new quantum technologies, and now they’re trying to catch up. A few years ago, Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the NSA, who recently released his own surveillance application for vulnerable reporters and...
IBM boosts the speed of homomorphic encryption by 75 percent
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Homomorphic encryption gives organisations a secure and easy way to run analytics on data without having to first decrypt it, but up until now it’s been oh so slow… IBM has announced that it’s rewritten its C++ Homomorphic encryption library and claims that it...
New quantum resistant crypto stops quantum computers spying on your data
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When large quantum computers come online circa 2025 over 70 percent of the world’s encryption will be at risk, so companies need to adopt new method to protect themselves and their data. As quantum computing becomes an increasingly “real” technology, moving out of the...
NIST scientists say they’ve created an “unhackable quantum machine”
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT In the future one thing is certain, there will be a plethora of new cyber threats so we need new ways to secure our systems and defend against them. New research published in the journal Nature by scientists at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in the...
IBM breaks the record for the world’s smallest computer
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As computers continue to shrink it allows organisations to dream up new ways of using them, and in IBM’s case they want to use their new tech to help cryptographically secure the Internet of Things. Each year IBM showcases “5 in 5” technologies coming...
MIT’s new secure, low power chip helps create the “Internet of Secure Things”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF More cyber criminals are choosing to target Internet of Things devices than ever before because they are easy to gain access to and exploit at scale, MIT’s new chip hopes to reverse that trend. From data breaches to weaponised devices, the Internet of Things...
Self-destructing algorithms could usher in a new era of cyber security
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One time programs perform obfuscated calculations within a “true black box” that then self-destructs keeping all the details of that calculation a secret forever, it has applications for encryption and software protection. Imagine two millionaires, you and your better half, or alternatively two random...
DNA encryption arrives to protect your genome from prying eyes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are increasingly sharing our DNA data online, and sometimes you don’t want everyone to see everything, so now researchers have developed the world’s first DNA Encryption product. When we talk about “security” it’s probably fair to say that not many people think about...
Russian researchers have created a ‘Quantum safe’ blockchain
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Tomorrow’s quantum computers will be able to crack at least seventy percent of all today’s encryption algorithms within minutes, but now Russia says they’ve created the ultimate, secure blockchain technology. Researchers at the Russian Quantum Center (RQC) announced earlier this week that they’ve created...
Wall Street supremo’s pile into a new AI hedge fund dubbed the future of finance
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Until now the financial services industry has never been able to benefit from a network effect, but that’s about to change and it could tip Wall Street on its head. The “Network Effect” is a phenomenon known the world over, it’s where a service...
Hiding on the Dark Web just got a whole lot easier
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A new Tor update has just created a new, even darker section of the Dark Web and it’s great news for privacy advocates – and criminals Only ten to twenty percent of the web can be searched and indexed by search engines, and it’s...
Technology and the future of privacy
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In Millenia past privacy was considered to be a normal part of life but now it is increasingly becoming a privilege and a scarcity, and, if it is not guarded, or looked after wisely, one day it won’t exist at all. I originally wrote...
Encryption’s arch nemesis is a ticking quantum time bomb
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Encryption is the primary tool that organisations and governments use to keep data safe and secure, when Quantum computers become more wide spread criminals, hackers and state sponsored actors will be able to use them to decrypt data and render most encryption algorithms obsolete. ...
Researchers listen in to crack 4096-bit encryption
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Researchers have used sound to break the worlds’ toughest encryption standard. Security researchers have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, by listening — yes, with a microphone — to a computer as it decrypts some encrypted data. The attack is...
