IEEE Cipher --- Items from security-related news (E170)
Summary:
In the month preceding the US midterm elections, a few state
government websites temporarily disabled by hacks from a Russian
hacktivist group. Though the attacks did not seem directly related
to the elections, they did interfere with access to information
intended to help voters. Some states reported that they might have
been targets of intended attacks that did not succeed in disabling
access.
Summary:
The LA DA had the founder of a small software company in Michigan
arrested. At issue was the software, used by LA County, for keeping
track of election poll workers. Under the terms of the contract,
the data had to be kept only on servers based in the US. LA County
said it was shared with servers in China. The founder of the
company was born in China.
Summary:
Summary:
The story gets murkier and murkier. The claims about sharing data
with the Chinese government originated not from an investigation by LA
County but by an organization called "True the Vote" based in Texas.
They supplied the information that LA County used to issue and arrest
warrant for a Michigan man. But were the claims true, and were they based
on legally obtained information? Those questions were raised in
federal court in Texas. The WP analyst says, "The outcome of this
complex case may not be clear for some time. But it indicates how
election deniers have begun to gain a foothold within the legal system
to advance their claims."
Summary:
As cryptocurrencies seek mainstream usage, the expansion seem to
regularly run afoul of computer security issues. In this case, a
blockchain meant to serve as a transfer hub between different
applications turned into a firehouse shooting out 2 million "illicit"
coins for a larcenous user. Apparently the user got away with $100M
before the activity was detected and stopped. In order to recover
most of the coins, the BNB Chain had to ask its "validators" to back
up and eliminate most of the coin transactions. The people behind the
BNB "ecosystem" said they were implementing more checks to detect and
stop the hack. They also intend to expand their community of 44
validators.
The BNB Chain is said to be "linked to" the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Binance recently declined to take over the battered and now collapsed rival FTX.
Summary:
The LDS church announced that it was working with US federal law
enforcement authorities to investigate some kind of breach into its
database of church members, employees, contractors, and "friends".
Some kind of illicit access may have been gained by hacking an online
account. No financial information was leaked by this. The church is
asking for information from the public that might help the investigation.
Summary:
A couple of years ago the US Air Force decided to see what hackers
could do with a satellite that was not longer in use but still had
accessible features for broadcast. They gave DEFCON hackers permission
to try their skills out with the equipment. Reports this spring show
that they were successful and were able to broadcast signals across
a wide area of Canada and the northern US. Are these old satellites,
which have little or nothing in the way of access control, a point of
vulnerability for national security? Or an opportunity for open access
broadcast of a new and democratic kind?
Summary:
Anonymity is a theoretical concept for computer science, but it is
also something sought by the humans behind online entities. The
science tells us that anonymity for cryptocurrency is based on
statistical evidence, but how do you know that your data is below that
statistically significant limit? And what about that email message
you sent to an online forum 20 years ago? Surely it's long lost, no
way it could be connected to you now? And besides, it would take an
army of computer science PhDs to unravel those tiny online footprints,
wouldn't it?
The real story of how some very persistent FBI agents wore away the anonymity of a skilled, online crime kingpin is fascinating reading. Wired magazine has been publishing it as an online weekly series, and it is captivating reading for real life crime junkies or doctoral researchers in security and privacy.
Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for WIRED, covering security, privacy, and information freedom. This story is excerpted from Greenberg's forthcoming book Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency, available November 15, 2022, from Doubleday. Courtesy of Penguin Random House
Summary:
IBM issued a brief press release noting that it had launched a new
quantum computer with 433 qubits. This is 3 times as many qubits as
their previous version which debuted last year. There will not be
another version of this design as IBM expects that it will have a
new, modular design next year, and that will scale to many thousands
of qubits.
IBM has announced a plethora of wonderful features for the next generation chip. One of the most interesting is the ability to run classical computing in between quantum operations. Presumably this enables a hybrid computation model that interleaves classical and quantum computing in some way that does not destroy the quantum state. The future architectures for quantum computing are slowly taking shape, as if through a photon pair, darkly.