The first computer network in which communication is secured with quantum cryptography is up and running in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chip Elliott, leader of the quantum engineering team at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, sent the first packets of data across the Quantum Net (Qnet) on Thursday. The project is funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The trust that PGP signatures generates can be deceptive, one researcher, a regular poster to the full-disclosure vulnerability mailing list, has discovered.
Gadi Evron, an information security researcher based in Israel, generally signs his posts to the list with his PGP signature, due to the fact that his email address is constantly used by spammers. Anyone who wants to verify an signed email is actually from the person claiming to send it, can do so.
What he did not reckon was that someone would try to use his PGP signature inside a spam email to impersonate him.
NIST scientists transfer a quantum key made of single photons at a rate of 1Mbps.
A team of US scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Colorado and Acadia Optronics, Maryland, claims to have built the world’s fastest quantum cryptography system (Optics Express 12 9).
NIST test bed
RSA Security on Tuesday said that over three months of consistent effort helped a team of mathematicians from Europe and North America solve the company's latest encryption puzzle. The multinational team of eight experts used about 100 workstations to crack the code that won them a $10,000 prize. The contestants' task was to determine the two prime numbers that have been used to generate eight "challenge" numbers, which are central to RSA’s 576-bit encryption code. RSA's contest is designed to help test the robustness of the lengthy algorithms used for electronic security.
The Apache Foundation has announced the addition of a beta implementation of XML Encryption to its XML Security Project, another small step towards full implementation of security standards in the pared-down markup language.
The XML Security Project, a volunteer unit of the Apache Foundation, focuses on W3C standards for XML security implementation.
With the beta for XML Encryption, the Project has added support for the encrypting and decrypting of XML-based (define) digital content.
Handhelds are steadily becoming a must have for a number of organizations and because all the services they provide, we tend to cram a lot of important data on them. Some security precautions should be considered and the program I'm covering today tends to provide secure signature based logon and encryption mechanisms.
Enhanced security can solve many issues, but it can't improve the thing that sits between the keyboard and the chair—the user—a cryptographers' panel concluded Tuesday. The panel, a staple of the RSA Conference here, invited four of the industry's luminaries on stage with Bruce Schneier, author and chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, to discuss the evolution of cryptography.
Internet scammers are increasingly casting around for financial information by "phishing" - using spam to deceive consumers into disclosing credit card numbers, bank account details and other sensitive information.
China has ordered computer makers, both at home and overseas, to use its own encryption standard for wireless local area networks, ensuring stronger government control and giving domestic manufacturers a slight respite from some foreign competition.
The new rules, which took effect on Monday, ban the importation and sale of all equipment used in wireless LANs -- so-called Wi-Fi services increasingly used to provide Internet connections in public spaces such as hotels, cafes and airports -- that does not comply with China's new standard.
A quantum-key distribution and encryption system developed by Magiq Technologies Inc. and called the Navajo Security Gateway promises unbreakable encryption over existing fiber-optic lines. The crypto system will initially be available only to U.S. companies and agencies, the company said.
