How the NSA’s Hubris Left America Vulnerable

A new book promises “the untold story of the cyberweapons market — the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.” Its author — a New York Times cybersecurity reporter — shares the book’s story about David Evenden, a former National Security Agency analyst who later worked in Abu…

The Terrorist Group is Defeated and Routed. But Its Backup Plan Survives

The terrorist group is defeated and routed. But its backup plan survives. From a report: It all began on October 27, 2019. Rumour was, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was dead. Nothing was confirmed, but already the jihadist world online was thrumming with excitement and trepidation. “I was walking through an airport,” Moustafa Ayad tells me. “Jet-lagged out…

US Says It Seized Cryptocurrency From Three Terrorist Groups

The Trump administration dismantled digital campaigns by al-Qaeda and other other terrorist groups that used social media to obtain cryptocurrency for carrying out terrorist attacks, the Justice Department said on Thursday. From a report: The U.S. seized millions of dollars and more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts used by al-Qaeda; Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades; and the Islamic State of Iraq…

Future information technologies: 3-D quantum spin liquid revealed

Quantum spin liquids are candidates for potential use in future information technologies. So far, quantum spin liquids have usually only been found in one or two dimensional magnetic systems only. Now an international team led by HZB scientists has investigated crystals of PbCuTe2O6 with neutron experiments at ISIS, NIST and ILL. …

Newspaper Decries Fearmongering of the ‘Student Surveillance Industry’

Iowa City’s school board heard presentations from “two companies pitching digital surveillance services,” complains a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, expressing concerns about their offers to “track students’ digital lives and flag potential threats for in-house analysts and school officials to review.” The student surveillance industry is overrun with buzz words, misinformation and fearmongering. Digital citizenship. Crowd-sourcing. Machine-learning algorithm. Those…

New Neanderthal bones found at famous Shanidar Cave

The newly found bones were close to the site of the famous ‘flower burial’ in Shanidar Cave, which overturned notions of Neanderthals as brutish subhumans and suggested they buried their dead. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/new_neanderthal_bones_shanidar_cave…

ZnS scintillation detector with wavelength shifting fiber readout

Detectors for reflectometry need to detect a lot of neutrons in a very short space of time. This means they need to be designed with very high count rate capabilities. Unfortunately, current detectors need to improve to meet the demands of reflectometry experiments so researchers at ISIS Neutron and Muon source have been working on a detector that can. …