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Archive for the ‘encryption’ category: Page 17

Sep 11, 2022

Ransomware gangs switching to new intermittent encryption tactic

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, encryption

A growing number of ransomware groups are adopting a new tactic that helps them encrypt their victims’ systems faster while reducing the chances of being detected and stopped.

This tactic is called intermittent encryption, and it consists of encrypting only parts of the targeted files’ content, which would still render the data unrecoverable without using a valid decryptor+key.

For example, by skipping every other 16 bytes of a file, the encryption process takes almost half of the time required for full encryption but still locks the contents for good.

Sep 6, 2022

‘Disruptive impact’: India’s military starts investing in quantum key distribution

Posted by in categories: encryption, military, quantum physics

“So a quantum key distribution consists of two things: No. 1, got to have a quantum random number generator, and that’s one of the things that QNu Labs makes,” he said. “The second thing that you need is the receivers in which those two devices connect and be used to convey encrypted messages in this fashion.”

In military use, quantum key distribution would work best in point to point communication — that is, communicating from one person to another. Creating a “true network” that’s able to send the same encrypted message to multiple receivers at once is challenging because the encrypted bit that’s carrying the message eventually begins to lose its coherence and “drops away,” Herman said.

“In the military, where you’re sending extremely sensitive classified data from one office to the next, you want to make sure that no one’s going to be able to break into and decrypt that,” he said. “Well, [quantum key distribution] is definitely a way in which to carry that out.”

Sep 6, 2022

Are Most Sites Vulnerable Due to Lack Of Encryption?

Posted by in categories: encryption, internet

This post is also available in: he עברית (Hebrew)

Bypassing complex encryption has become a main goal and pursuit to State-actors and cybercriminals alike. It has never been more important to focus on updated, resilient HTTPS configurations, according to the TLS Telemetry Report by F5 Labs, which uncovers the extent of internet encryption and the potential use or abuse of web encryption for malicious purposes.

Based on the screening of the top million websites in the world, the report claims that more than half of the web servers still allow unsecured RSA Exchange. In addition, the negation of authorization remains problematic, due to the prevalence of legacy servers updated only rarely.

Aug 28, 2022

New encryption tool is designed to thwart quantum computers

Posted by in categories: computing, encryption, finance, mathematics, quantum physics

An encryption tool co-created by a University of Cincinnati math professor will soon safeguard the telecommunications, online retail and banking and other digital systems we use every day.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology chose four new encryption tools designed to thwart the next generation of hackers or thieves. One of them, called CRYSTALS-Kyber, is co-created by UC College of Arts and Sciences math professor Jintai Ding.

“It’s not just for today but for tomorrow,” Ding said. “This is information that you don’t want people to know even 30 or 50 years from now.”

Aug 27, 2022

CISA: Prepare now for quantum computers, not when hackers use them

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, encryption, quantum physics

Although quantum computing is not commercially available, CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) urges organizations to prepare for the dawn of this new age, which is expected to bring groundbreaking changes in cryptography, and how we protect our secrets.

The agency published a paper earlier in the week, calling for leaders to start preparing for the migration to stronger secret guarding systems, exploring risk mitigation methods, and participating in developing new standards.

Aug 27, 2022

Quantum computing is an even bigger threat than artificial intelligence

Posted by in categories: blockchains, encryption, information science, quantum physics, robotics/AI, satellites, security

Given the potential scope and capabilities of quantum technology, it is absolutely crucial not to repeat the mistakes made with AI—where regulatory failure has given the world algorithmic bias that hypercharges human prejudices, social media that favors conspiracy theories, and attacks on the institutions of democracy fueled by AI-generated fake news and social media posts. The dangers lie in the machine’s ability to make decisions autonomously, with flaws in the computer code resulting in unanticipated, often detrimental, outcomes. In 2021, the quantum community issued a call for action to urgently address these concerns. In addition, critical public and private intellectual property on quantum-enabling technologies must be protected from theft and abuse by the United States’ adversaries.

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=5…MexaVnE%24

There are national defense issues involved as well. In security technology circles, the holy grail is what’s called a cryptanalytically relevant quantum computer —a system capable of breaking much of the public-key cryptography that digital systems around the world use, which would enable blockchain cracking, for example. That’s a very dangerous capability to have in the hands of an adversarial regime.

Continue reading “Quantum computing is an even bigger threat than artificial intelligence” »

Aug 15, 2022

AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being blind to others

Posted by in categories: encryption, information science, mobile phones, robotics/AI, security, surveillance, transportation

Over the past decade, digital cameras have been widely adopted in various aspects of our society, and are being massively used in mobile phones, security surveillance, autonomous vehicles, and facial recognition. Through these cameras, enormous amounts of image data are being generated, which raises growing concerns about privacy protection.

Some existing methods address these concerns by applying algorithms to conceal sensitive information from the acquired images, such as image blurring or encryption. However, such methods still risk exposure of sensitive data because the raw images are already captured before they undergo digital processing to hide or encrypt the sensitive information. Also, the computation of these algorithms requires additional power consumption. Other efforts were also made to seek solutions to this problem by using customized cameras to downgrade the image quality so that identifiable information can be concealed. However, these approaches sacrifice the overall for all the objects of interest, which is undesired, and they are still vulnerable to adversarial attacks to retrieve the that is recorded.

A new research paper published in eLight demonstrated a new paradigm to achieve privacy-preserving imaging by building a fundamentally new type of imager designed by AI. In their paper, UCLA researchers, led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, presented a smart design that images only certain types of desired objects, while instantaneously erasing other types of objects from its images without requiring any digital processing.

Aug 10, 2022

Scientists hid encryption key for Wizard of Oz text in plastic molecules

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical, chemistry, computing, encryption

It’s “a revolutionary scientific advance in molecular data storage and cryptography.”


Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin sent a letter to colleagues in Massachusetts with a secret message: an encryption key to unlock a text file of L. Frank Baum’s classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The twist: The encryption key was hidden in a special ink laced with polymers, They described their work in a recent paper published in the journal ACS Central Science.

When it comes to alternative means for data storage and retrieval, the goal is to store data in the smallest amount of space in a durable and readable format. Among polymers, DNA has long been the front runner in that regard. As we’ve reported previously, DNA has four chemical building blocks—adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine ©—which constitute a type of code. Information can be stored in DNA by converting the data from binary code to a base-4 code and assigning it one of the four letters. A single gram of DNA can represent nearly 1 billion terabytes (1 zettabyte) of data. And the stored data can be preserved for long periods—decades, or even centuries.

Continue reading “Scientists hid encryption key for Wizard of Oz text in plastic molecules” »

Aug 4, 2022

Single-Core CPU Cracked Post-Quantum Encryption Candidate Algorithm in Just an Hour

Posted by in categories: computing, encryption, information science, quantum physics

It took researchers about 62 minutes to crack a late-stage Post-Quantum Encryption candidate algorithm using a single-core CPU.

Aug 3, 2022

Developing a new approach for building quantum computers

Posted by in categories: encryption, engineering, quantum physics, supercomputing

Quantum computing, though still in its early days, has the potential to dramatically increase processing power by harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales. Some research groups have already reported performing calculations that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of years. In the long term, quantum computers could provide unbreakable encryption and simulations of nature beyond today’s capabilities.

A UCLA-led interdisciplinary research team including collaborators at Harvard University has now developed a fundamentally new strategy for building these computers. While the current state of the art employs circuits, semiconductors and other tools of electrical engineering, the team has produced a game plan based in chemists’ ability to custom-design atomic building blocks that control the properties of larger molecular structures when they’re put together.

The findings, published last week in Nature Chemistry, could ultimately lead to a leap in quantum processing power.

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