Quantum Computing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Apple has announced a new post-quantum cryptographic protocol called  PQ3  that it said will be integrated into iMessage to secure the messaging platform against future attacks arising from the threat of a practical quantum computer. "With compromise-resilient encryption and extensive defenses against even highly sophisticated quantum attacks, PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to reach what we call Level 3 security — providing protocol protections that surpass those in all other widely deployed messaging apps," Apple  said . The iPhone maker described the protocol as "groundbreaking," "state-of-the-art," and as having the "strongest security properties" of any cryptographic convention deployed at scale. PQ3 is the latest security guardrail erected by Apple in iMessage after it switched from  RSA  to Elliptic Curve cryptography ( ECC ), and by protecting encryption keys on devices with the Secure Enclave in 2019. While the current algorith

Most people are barely thinking about basic cybersecurity, let alone post-quantum cryptography. But the impact of a post-quantum world is coming for them regardless of whether or not it's keeping them up tonight.  Today, many rely on encryption in their daily lives to protect their fundamental digital privacy and security, whether for messaging friends and family, storing files and photos, or simply browsing the web. The question experts have been asking for a long time, with their eye on the advances in quantum computing, is, "How long before these defenses fail?"  The ticking clock of quantum computing One set of researchers is already sounding the alarms,  claiming  that they've found a way to break 2048-bit RSA encryption with a quantum computer. While the claims may be premature, they hint toward a scary future that is perhaps closer than we once thought. Breaking RSA encryption would represent a massive privacy and security vulnerability for virtually every

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

A group of researchers has revealed what it says is a vulnerability in a specific implementation of  CRYSTALS-Kyber , one of the encryption algorithms chosen by the U.S. government as quantum-resistant last year. The exploit relates to "side-channel attacks on up to the fifth-order masked implementations of CRYSTALS-Kyber in ARM Cortex-M4 CPU," Elena Dubrova, Kalle Ngo, and Joel Gärtner of KTH Royal Institute of Technology  said  in a paper. CRYSTALS-Kyber is one of four post-quantum algorithms  selected  by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) after a rigorous multi-year effort to identify a set of next-generation encryption standards that can withstand huge leaps in computing power. A side-channel attack, as the name implies, involves extracting secrets from a cryptosystem through measurement and analysis of physical parameters. Some examples of such parameters include supply current, execution time, and electromagnetic emission. The underlyi

A late-stage candidate encryption algorithm that was meant to withstand decryption by powerful quantum computers in the future has been trivially cracked by using a computer running Intel Xeon CPU in an hour's time. The algorithm in question is SIKE — short for Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation — which made it to the  fourth round  of the Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standardization process initiated by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). "Ran on a single core, the appended  Magma   code  breaks the Microsoft  SIKE challenges  $IKEp182 and $IKEp217 in about 4 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively," KU Leuven researchers Wouter Castryck and Thomas Decru  said  in a new paper. "A run on the SIKEp434 parameters, previously believed to meet NIST's quantum security level 1, took about 62 minutes, again on a single core." The code was executed on an Intel  Xeon CPU E5-2630v2  at 2.60GHz, which w

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has  chosen  the first set of quantum-resistant encryption algorithms that are designed to "withstand the assault of a future quantum computer." The post-quantum cryptography ( PQC ) technologies include the  CRYSTALS-Kyber  algorithm for general encryption, and  CRYSTALS-Dilithium ,  FALCON , and  SPHINCS+  for digital signatures. "Three of the selected algorithms are based on a family of math problems called structured lattices, while SPHINCS+ uses hash functions," NIST, which kicked off the standardization process in January 2017,  said  in a statement. Cryptography, which underpins the security of information in modern computer networks, derives its strength from the difficulty of solving mathematical problems — e.g., factoring large composite integers — using traditional computers. Quantum computers, should they mature enough, pose a  huge impact  on the current pu

Revolutionary ideas in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics don't occur every day. But when those "eureka" moments happen, we need to provide a forum to explore those ideas, judge them on their merits, and distinguish the extraordinary from the merely good. Once a year, Nokia Bell Labs makes that forum a reality, where robust proposals that have the potential to revolutionize the future of human experience are presented and debated. If you think your idea could be one of them, the Nokia Bell Labs Prize is for you. Solving challenges that connect humans, systems, things, infrastructure, or processes, the 2020 Nokia Bell Labs Prize is an opportunity for innovators around the world to collaborate with world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs researchers and transform their ideas into prototypes of the future. What kind of ideas are we talking about? Big, bold, and bordering on audacious, they should have far-reaching, humanity-changing implications. Previous

Quantum Computers – Boon or Bane? Quantum computers can perform operations much more quickly and efficiently even with the use of less energy than conventional computers, but that's bad news for encryption — a process which scrambles data according to a massively complex mathematical code. In theory, quantum computers can break almost all the existing encryption algorithms used on the Internet today due to their immense computing power. Quantum computers are not just in theories; they're becoming a reality. With countries like China that holds the top two position in the world's most powerful supercomputers (Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2), followed by the United States' Titan, the day is not far when Quantum computers will work on an industrial scale. Although it's hard to move quantum computing to an industrial scale, it has become a matter of concern for the United States' National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) over the fact that

China has taken one more step forward towards achieving success in Quantum communication technology. China has launched the world's first quantum communications satellite into orbit aboard a Long March-2D rocket earlier today in order to test the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics at space. 'Hack-Proof' Communications System The satellite, dubbed Quantum Science Satellite, is designed to develop a ' Hack-Proof ' communications system in this age of global electronic surveillance and cyber attacks by transmitting uncrackable encryption keys from space to the ground. The 600-plus-kilogram Quantum Science Satellite , better known as Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) satellite, took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gobi Desert at 1:40 AM local time on a 2-year mission on Tuesday. The QUESS satellite will help China perform unprecedented levels of experiments in quantum communication by sending entangled photons from the satellite

In Brief What would you do if you get access to a Quantum Computer? IBM Scientists launches the world's first cloud-based quantum computing technology, calling the IBM Quantum Experience, for anyone to use. It is an online simulator that lets anyone run algorithms and experiments on the company's five-qubit quantum computer. Quantum computers are expected to take the computing technology to the highest level, but it is an experimental and enormously complex technology that Google and NASA are working on and is just a dream for general users to play with. Hold on! IBM is trying to make your dream a reality. IBM just made its new quantum computing project online ( with tutorials ), making it available for free to anyone interested in playing with it. Quantum Computers — Now A Reality! The technology company said on Wednesday that it is giving the world access to one of its quantum computing processors, which is yet an experimental technology that has the potential

Announcing the results of its experiment, Google says Quantum Computer is More than 100 Million times faster than a regular PC. Two years ago, Google and NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration ) bought a D-Wave 2X quantum computer , which they have been experimenting at the U.S. space agency's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California for the past two years. The goal is to create a better way to solve highly complex problems in seconds rather than years. Also Read:  Fastest Operating System for Quantum Computing Developed By Researchers Now, a Google's Quantum AI team appears to have announced the results of its latest test on D-Wave 2X quantum computer, demonstrating that quantum annealing can outperform simulated annealing by over 108 times – that is 100,000,000 times faster . What is  Quantum Computers? Quantum computers can theoretically be so much faster because they take advantage of quantum mechanics. While traditiona

We are just one step closer to creating a Harry Potter or ' Star Trek '-style Transporter. However, When we talk about Teleportation, we don't typically mean Teleporting any matter from one place to another as in the Science-fiction Movies. Rather, Teleportation involves capturing the essential information about something — its " quantum state ", to recreate it exactly someplace else. A month ago, The Hacker News had reported the battle between Quantum computers and Encryption . Now, with the development of technology, the NIST Scientists have set a new record in the field of " Quantum Teleportation ", as they successfully Teleported a small amount of data ( called 'qubit' ) inside light particles over a distance of 60 miles ( 100 km ) through a network of optical fiber. Teleportation enables transfer of ' Quantum state ' of a Photon to another Photon in the same state residing remotely at a far-off distance. This Record being farthest than t

Sometimes, instead of black and white we tend to look out, how a grey would look? Yes, today we are going to discuss the 'entangling' or 'superpositioning' which is a power packed functionality of quantum computers. And simultaneously, how can they pose a threat when fully launched in the world. Superposition is a state in which a system can be in multiple stages i.e. it can be 'up' and 'down' at the same time. The Quantum systems can hit different modules of a problem simultaneously, split across possible versions of the universe. What are Quantum Computers? Quantum computers are going to be the next huge development in computing for processing data, with an ability to perform calculations thousands of times faster than today's modern supercomputers. Quantum computing is not well suited for tasks such as word processing and email, but it is ideal for tasks such as cryptography, modeling and indexing enormous databases. A quantum computer can compute in min

The Awareness to encrypt your private data, chat conversations as well as communication is booming like never before that soon the world will mark some day as the International Encryption Day . This may or may not be possible in future, but Toshiba is all set to create a next level of encryption technology that the firm claims is absolutely unbreakable and " completely secure from tapping ". The best way to ensure the complete security of the communication is to make use of a one-time key to decode encrypted data. However, the problem remains to transfer this key from one place to another safely when even mail carriers may be spying on you. Uncrackable Encryption Technology: The Quantum Cryptography System To get rid of this issue, Toshiba is creating a 'foolproof' Q uantum Cryptography System that uses photons sent over a custom-made fiber optic cable that is not connected to the Internet. Thus, anyone trying to intercept the user's d

So far, we just have heard about Quantum computing that could make even complex calculations trivial, but there are no practical Quantum computers exist. However, the dream of Quantum computers could become a reality in coming future. Cambridge Quantum Computing Limited (CQCL) has build a new Fastest Operating System aimed at running the futuristic superfast quantum computers . The new operating system, dubbed  t|kit> , has been featured by CQCL's very own proprietary custom designed high-speed super mechanism, allowing the company to accurately impersonate the working of a quantum processor. " CQCL is at the forefront of developing an operating system that will allow users to harness the joint power of classical super computers alongside quantum computers, " the company said in a press release. " The development of t|ket> is a major milestone ." Quantum Computers — Soon be Reali ty Researchers have been working on significant activities to develop qu