Lifeboat Foundation

ZeroHedge — On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

DuckDuckGo, the search engine which claims to offer ‘real privacy’ because it doesn’t track searches or store users’ history, has come under fire after a security researcher discovered that the mobile DuckDuckGo browser app contains a third-party tracker from Microsoft.

Researcher Zach Edwards found that while Google and Facebook’s trackers are blocked, trackers related to bing.com and linkedin.com were also being allowed through.

Continue reading “‘Privacy’ Search Engine DuckDuckGo Smoked Over Hidden Tracking Agreement With Microsoft” »

For instance, continuous-variable (CV) QKD has its own distinct advantages at a metropolitan distance^36,37 due to the use of common components of coherent optical communication technology. In addition, the homodyne³⁸ or heterodyne³⁹ measurements used by CV-QKD have inherent extraordinary spectral filtering capabilities, which allows the crosstalk in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channels to be effectively suppressed. Therefore, hundreds of QKD channels may be integrated into a single optical fiber and can be cotransmitted with classic data channels. This allows QKD channels to be more effectively integrated into existing communication networks. In CV-QKD, discrete modulation technology has attracted much attention^{31,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50} because of its ability to reduce the requirements for modulation devices. However, due to the lack of symmetry, the security proof of discrete modulation CV-QKD also mainly relies on numerical methods^{43,44,45,46,47,48,51}.

Unfortunately, calculating a secure key rate by numerical methods requires minimizing a convex function over all eavesdropping attacks related with the experimental data^52,53. The efficiency of this optimization depends on the number of parameters of the QKD protocol. For example, in discrete modulation CV-QKD, the number of parameters is generally \(1000–3000\) depending on the different choices of cutoff photon numbers⁴⁴. This leads to the corresponding optimization possibly taking minutes or even hours⁵¹. Therefore, it is especially important to develop tools for calculating the key rate that are more efficient than numerical methods.

In this work, we take the homodyne detection discrete-modulated CV-QKD⁴⁴ as an example to construct a neural network capable of predicting the secure key rate for the purpose of saving time and resource consumption. We apply our neural network to a test set obtained at different excess noises and distances. Excellent accuracy and time savings are observed after adjusting the hyperparameters. Importantly, the predicted key rates are highly likely to be secure. Note that our method is versatile and can be extended to quickly calculate the complex secure key rates of various other unstructured quantum key distribution protocols. Through some open source deep learning frameworks for on-device inference, such as TensorFlow Lite⁵⁴, our model can also be easily deployed on devices at the edge of the network, such as mobile devices, embedded Linux or microcontrollers.

Microsoft security researchers have found high severity vulnerabilities in a framework used by Android apps from multiple large international mobile service providers.

The researchers found these vulnerabilities (tracked as CVE-2021–42598, CVE-2021–42599, CVE-2021–42600, and CVE-2021–42601) in a mobile framework owned by mce Systems exposing users to command injection and privilege escalation attacks.

The vulnerable apps have millions of downloads on Google’s Play Store and come pre-installed as system applications on devices bought from affected telecommunications operators, including AT&T, TELUS, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, and Freedom Mobile.

New laws are meant to prevent espionage and leaking.

The popular Screencastify Chrome extension has fixed a vulnerability that allowed malicious sites to hijack users’ webcams and steal recorded videos. However, security flaws still exist that could be exploited by unscrupulous insiders.

The vendor acknowledged the cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability and promptly fixed it after security researcher Wladimir Palant reported it responsibly on February 14, 2022.

However, the same privacy and security-related risks remain unaddressed, keeping users at potential risk from websites that partner with the Screencastify platform.

Circa 2014

For most of us, even one bite of chocolate is enough to send our taste buds into ecstasy. Now, scientists have concocted a process to make these dark, dulcet morsels look as decadent as they taste.

Switzerland-based company Morphotonix has given traditional Swiss chocolate-making a colorful twist: It’s devised a method to imprint shiny holograms onto the sweet surfaces — sans harmful additives. Which means when you tilt the goodies from side to side, rainbow stars and swirly patterns on the chocolate’s surface dance and shimmer in the light.

Continue reading “Holographic Chocolates Look As Beautiful As They Taste” »

Canada’s government said it would ban the use of the two Chinese telecommunications giants’ 5G gear due to national security concerns. The move follows similar bans in other Western countries.

A group of researchers developed a tool capable of detecting errors in the way applications such as Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word process JavaScript code, which has allowed finding a total of 134 security flaws, of which 33 have already received a CVE tracking key.

The tool is called “Cooper”, in reference to the technique known as “Cooperative Mutation” it employees. Xu Peng, a software development specialist and co-author of the tool, explains that tools like the ones mentioned accept information from scripting languages; for example, Acrobat allows JavaScript to manipulate PDF files.

Continue reading “New tool to find vulnerabilities in the way applications like Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat process JavaScript: Cooperative mutation attack” »