Rob Enderle reports on the excitement at AMD’s Epyc processor launch in San Francisco: I’ve been at a lot of AMD events, and up until this one, the general message was that AMD was almost as good as Intel but not as expensive. This year it is very different; Intel has stumbled badly, and AMD is moving to take the leadership…
Tag: encryption
Did WhatsApp Backdoor Rumor Come From ‘Unanswered Questions ‘ and ‘Leap of Faith’ For Closed-Source Encryption Products?
On Friday technologist Bruce Schneier wrote that after reviewing responses from WhatsApp, he’s concluded that reports of a pre-encryption backdoor are a false alarm. He also says he got an equally strong confirmation from WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy Manager Nate Cardozo, who Facebook hired last December from the EFF. “He basically leveraged his historical reputation to assure me that WhatsApp, and Facebook…
Facebook Insists No Security ‘Backdoor’ Is Planned for WhatsApp
An anonymous reader shares a report: Billions of people use the messaging tool WhatsApp, which added end-to-end encryption for every form of communication available on its platform back in 2016. This ensures that conversations between users and their contacts — whether they occur via text or voice calls — are private, inaccessible even to the company itself. But several recent posts…
Quantum light sources pave the way for optical circuits
An international team headed up by Alexander Holleitner and Jonathan Finley, physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has succeeded in placing light sources in atomically thin material layers with an accuracy of just a few nanometers. The new method allows for a multitude of applications in quantum technologies, from quantum sensors and transistors in smartphones through to new encryption…
Did Facebook End The Encryption Debate?
Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru argues that “the encryption debate is already over — Facebook ended it earlier this year.” The ability of encryption to shield a user’s communications rests upon the assumption that the sender and recipient’s devices are themselves secure, with the encrypted channel the only weak point… [But] Facebook announced earlier this year preliminary results from its efforts to…
Microsoft Warns of Political Cyberattacks, Announces Free Vote-Verification Software
“Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it would give away software designed to improve the security of American voting machines,” reports NBC News. Microsoft also said its AccountGuard service has already spotted 781 cyberattacks by foreign adversaries targeting political organizations — 95% of which were located in the U.S. The company said it was rolling out the free, open-source software product called…
Should Local Governments Pay Ransomware Attackers?
At least 170 local or state government systems in America have been hit with ransomware, and the French Interior Ministry received reports of 560 incidents just in 2018, according to Phys.org. (Though the French ministry also notes that most incidents aren’t reported.) But when a government system is hit by ransomware, do they have a responsibility to pay the ransomware to…
A Look at How Movies and Shows From Netflix and Amazon Prime Video Are Pirated
News blog TorrentFreak spoke with a member of piracy group “The Scene” to understand how they obtain — or rip — movies and shows from sources such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The technique these people use is different from hardware capture cards or software-based ‘capping’ tools. From the report: “Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source…
Trump White House Reportedly Debating Encryption Policy Behind Closed Doors
According to a report in Politico, the Trump administration held a National Security Council meeting on Wednesday that weighed the challenges and benefits of encryption. “One of Politico’s sources said that the meeting was split into two camps: Decide, create and publicize the administration’s position on encryption or go so far as to ask Congress for legislation to ban end-to-end encryption,”…
Bizarre New Theories Emerge About Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
“I am not saying that Neal Stephenson is Satoshi Nakamoto,” writes the features editor at Reason. “What I am saying is: Would it really be surprising if he were?” This prompted a strong rebuke from CCN Markets: The article starts, “Consider the possibility that Neal Stephenson is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin.” Let’s not do that. That’s like saying…