Lifeboat Foundation

Since they were first theorized by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers have promised to bring about a new era of computing. It is only relatively recently that theory has translated into significant real-world advances, with the likes of Google, NASA and the CIA working towards building a quantum computer. Computer scientists are now warning that the arrival of the ultra-powerful machines will cripple current encryption methods and as a result bring a close to the great bitcoin experiment—collapsing the technological foundations that bitcoin is built upon.

“Bitcoin is definitely not quantum computer proof,” Andersen Cheng, co-founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Post Quantum, tells Newsweek. “Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.”

The danger quantum computers pose to bitcoin, Cheng explains, is in the cryptography surrounding what is known as the public and private keys—a set of numbers used to facilitate transactions. Users of bitcoin have a public key and a private key. In order to receive bitcoin, the recipient shares the public key with the sender, but in order to spend it they need their private key, which only they know. If somebody else is able to learn the private key, they can spend all the bitcoin.

Continue reading “Will Quantum Computers Kill Bitcoin?” »

Earlier this week, Canada’s electronic spy agency the Communications Security Establishment warned government agencies and businesses against quantum mechanics, which could cripple the majority of encryption methods implemented by leading corporations and agencies globally.

Governments and private companies employ a variety of cryptographic security systems and protocols to protect and store important data. Amongst these encryption methods, the most popular system is public key cryptography (PKC), which can be integrated onto a wide range of software, platforms, and applications to encrypt data.

The Communications Security Establishment and its chief Greta Bossenmaier believes that quantum computing is technically capable of targeting PKC-based encryption methods, making data vulnerable to security breaches and hacking attempts from foreign state spies and anonymous hacking groups.

Continue reading “Quantum Computing Could Cripple Encryption; Bitcoin’s Role” »

The European Commission is getting ready to propose new legislation to protect machines from cybersecurity breaches, signalling the executive’s growing interest in encouraging traditional European manufacturers to build more devices that are connected to the internet.

A new plan to overhaul EU telecoms law, which digital policy chiefs Günther Oettinger and Andrus Ansip presented three weeks ago, aims to speed up internet connections to meet the needs of big industries like car manufacturing and agriculture as they gradually use more internet functions.

But that transition to more and faster internet connections has caused many companies to worry that new products and industrial tools that rely on the internet will be more vulnerable to attacks from hackers.

Continue reading “Commission plans cybersecurity rules for internet-connected machines” »

Smart viruses holding hospital equipment to ransom. Malware that impersonates people you know. Data-altering software that can destroy corporations. Get ready.

Ww.geekwire.com/2016/iot-genetics-self-driving-ships-space-travel-darpa-chief-arati-prabhakar-tours-agencys-landscape/

The Internet of Things so widely predicted as the Next Big Thing in computing is full of promise but presents a correspondingly large vulnerability to cyber attacks, said Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA, at the 2016 GeekWire Summit in Seattle today.

IoT offers “a huge value, but then with every advance comes more attack surface,” said Prabhakar during an interview with Alan Boyle, GeekWire’s aerospace and science editor. “Provably secure embedded systems is part of the answer.”

Continue reading “DARPA chief Arati Prabhakar on self-driving ships, space travel, IoT, genetics, and more” »

As I have continued for over a year to repeat that for any company or government entity to not include QC in their 5+ yrs future state roadmap is truly enabling their company or government to be easy pickings for hackers.

Quantum scientist Michele Mosca will discuss security in the coming quantum age during a live Webcast tonight at 7 P.M.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has launched a multi-year research and development effort to create new technologies that could provide an early warning system for detecting precursors to cyberattacks. If successful, the government effort could help businesses and other targets move beyond the reactive approach to contending with a massive and growing problem.

IARPA, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, says the three-and-a-half year program will develop software code to sense unconventional indicators of cyber attack, and use the data to develop models and machine learning systems that can create probabilistic warnings.

Current early warning systems are focused on traditional cyber indicators such as activity targeted toward IP addresses and domain names, according to IARPA program manager Robert Rahmer. The first stage, lasting 18 months, will examine data outside of the victim network, such as black market sales of exploits that take advantage of particular software bugs. The second and third phases, 12 months each, will examine internal target organization data and look for ways to develop warnings and transfer any tools that emerge from the research from one organization to another, he said.

Continue reading “IARPA To Develop Early-Warning System For Cyberattacks” »

Ouch!!!

National Security Agency says tools left exposed by mistake — and dumping by presumably Russia-backed hackers Shadow Brokers.

An FBI investigation into the public dumping of hacking tools used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to uncover security flaws in some networking vendor products is looking at how the tools were exposed on a remote computer, a Reuters report says, quoting people close to the investigation.

Continue reading “FBI Probes Dumping Of NSA Hack Tools On Public Site” »

This is definitely something that we should all be aware of, and watching for.

“Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet,” according to a blog post by security expert Bruce Schneier.

Continue reading “Someone is learning how to take down the Internet” »