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Quantum theory predicts that a vast number of atoms can be entangled and intertwined by a very strong quantum relationship, even in a macroscopic structure. Until now, however, experimental evidence has been mostly lacking, although recent advances have shown the entanglement of 2,900 atoms. Scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, recently reengineered their data processing, demonstrating that 16 million atoms were entangled in a one-centimetre crystal. They have published their results in Nature Communications.

The laws of quantum physics allow immediately detecting when emitted signals are intercepted by a third party. This property is crucial for data protection, especially in the encryption industry, which can now guarantee that customers will be aware of any interception of their messages. These signals also need to be able to travel long distances using special relay devices known as quantum repeaters—crystals enriched with rare earth atoms and cooled to 270 degrees below zero (barely three degrees above absolute zero), whose atoms are entangled and unified by a very strong quantum relationship. When a photon penetrates this small crystal block, entanglement is created between the billions of atoms it traverses. This is explicitly predicted by the theory, and it is exactly what happens as the crystal re-emits a single photon without reading the information it has received.

It is relatively easy to entangle two particles: Splitting a photon, for example, generates two entangled photons that have identical properties and behaviours. Florian Fröwis, a researcher in the applied physics group in UNIGE’s science faculty, says, “But it’s impossible to directly observe the process of entanglement between several million atoms since the mass of data you need to collect and analyse is so huge.”

Continue reading “A single photon reveals quantum entanglement of 16 million atoms” »

President Chunli Bai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing had a meeting yesterday with President Anton Zeilinger of the Austria Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Although 7,400 kilometres (4,600 miles) apart, they were certain no uninvited guests were eavesdropping thanks to the fact their video call was encrypted. Quantum style.

Just a few months ago, China was in the news for a landmark achievement in quantum communication, using a satellite called Micius to transmit entangled photons over a record distance.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Made The First Quantum-Encrypted International Video Call” »

For the first time, researchers have sent a quantum-secured message containing more than one bit of information per photon through the air above a city. The demonstration showed that it could one day be practical to use high-capacity, free-space quantum communication to create a highly secure link between ground-based networks and satellites, a requirement for creating a global quantum encryption network.

Quantum encryption uses photons to encode information in the form of quantum bits. In its simplest form, known as 2D encryption, each photon encodes one bit: either a one or a zero. Scientists have shown that a single photon can encode even more information—a concept known as high-dimensional quantum encryption—but until now this has never been demonstrated with free-space optical communication in real-world conditions. With eight bits necessary to encode just one letter, for example, packing more information into each photon would significantly speed up data transmission.

“Our work is the first to send messages in a secure manner using high-dimensional quantum encryption in realistic city conditions, including turbulence,” said research team lead, Ebrahim Karimi, University of Ottawa, Canada. “The secure, free-space communication scheme we demonstrated could potentially link Earth with satellites, securely connect places where it is too expensive to install fiber, or be used for encrypted communication with a moving object, such as an airplane.”

Continue reading “High-Dimensional Quantum Encryption Performed in Real-World City Conditions for First Time” »

Chinese researchers report that they’ve set a new distance record for quantum teleportation through space, the phenomenon that Albert Einstein once scoffed at as “spooky action at a distance.”

The technology isn’t yet ready for prime time, but eventually it could open the way for a new type of unbreakable encryption scheme based on the weirdness of quantum physics.

Continue reading “China’s Micius satellite sets distance record for quantum entanglement in space” »

Confidential details of a top-secret encryption-breaking supercomputer were left completely exposed on an unsecured computer server belonging to New York University (NYU), according to a new report.

While it’s not uncommon for even critical-level infrastructure to suffer potentially catastrophic security breaches, what makes this event different is that there was seemingly no foul-play or attempts to hack into NYU’s systems.

Instead, it looks like somebody may have just forgotten to secure their classified data properly, exposing hundreds of pages of information on a covert code-breaking machine co-administered by the Department of Defence, IBM, and NYU.

Continue reading “NYU Accidentally Leaked a Top-Secret Code-Breaking Supercomputer to The Entire Internet” »

Someone may have finally cracked a form of DVD encryption believed to be impenetrable. Potentially, this could mean it’s now possible to download 4K Blu-Ray movies online, though you shouldn’t get too excited yet.

According to TorrentFreak, an allegedly cracked copy of The Smurfs 2 — why that one, of all films, is a mystery — surfaced on HD Bit Torrent community UltraHDClub. There are no other details at the moment.

We’ve teamed up with Product Hunt to offer you the chance to win an all expense paid trip to TNW Conference 2017!

Continue reading “Pirates may have cracked the code to 4K UHD torrents” »

After conducting a statistical analysis of the text, Russian experts believe it’s encrypted in the following way: vowels and spaces are removed from the text. The collection of symbols is united in a new text, bestrewed with spaces beforehand. They estimate that about 60 percent of the text is written in English or German, and the other part in one of the Romance languages – possibly Italian or Spanish, or even Latin.

Experts previously thought it impossible to decipher the medieval text.

Zcash is the first open, permissionless cryptocurrency that can fully protect the privacy of transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography. The Zcash client is now available for download as a command-line tool for Linux.

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Abstract: In this paper we present a method which allows attackers to covertly leak data from isolated, air-gapped computers. Our method utilizes the hard disk drive (HDD) activity LED which exists in most of today’s desktop PCs, laptops and servers. We show that a malware can indirectly control the HDD LED, turning it on and off rapidly (up to 5800 blinks per second) — a rate that exceeds the visual perception capabilities of humans. Sensitive information can be encoded and leaked over the LED signals, which can then be received remotely by different kinds of cameras and light sensors. Compared to other LED methods, our method is unique, because it is also covert — the HDD activity LED routinely flickers frequently, and therefore the user may not be suspicious to changes in its activity. We discuss attack scenarios and present the necessary technical background regarding the HDD LED and its hardware control. We also present various data modulation methods and describe the implementation of a user-level malware, that doesn’t require a kernel component. During the evaluation, we examine the physical characteristics of different colored HDD LEDs (red, blue, and white) and tested different types of receivers: remote cameras, extreme cameras, security cameras, smartphone cameras, drone cameras, and optical sensors. Finally, we discuss hardware and software countermeasures for such a threat. Our experiment shows that sensitive data can be successfully leaked from air-gapped computers via the HDD LED at a maximum bit rate of 4000 bits per second, depending on the type of receiver and its distance from the transmitter. Notably, this speed is 10 times faster than the existing optical covert channels for air-gapped computers. These rates allow fast exfiltration of encryption keys, keystroke logging, and text and binary files.