The term "cryptopocalypse" was probably first coined at the Black Hat USA information security convention in 2013.A talk presented by four security and technology experts at the show explored cryptographic weaknesses and attempted to answer the hypothetical question: "What happens the day after RSA is broken?"RSA is a widely used public-key cryptosystem used in digital signatures.The answer, they determined then, was: "almost total failure of trust in the Internet," for one thing. The reason? Almost everything we do on the Internet is in some way protected by cryptography.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Only 20% to 50% of in-house server capacity is actually used, even with virtualization gains, according to numbers from MIT-connected startup Jisto. The company says it has a solution, though, which will save enterprises money.The problem that Jisto is looking to solve is that, although companies usually provision plenty of cloud and in-house server space, artificial static walls, which are created with ownership profiles and resource groups, create waste. Servers are underutilized.Redundancy-prone
It isn't just the in-house servers, either. Cloud capacity is also redundancy-prone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Robots will become smarter and faster than humans, an Oxford University professor said recently.
And not only will robots be better than us at a lot of things, they'll eventually take over and make humans redundant, the professor reckons.Predictions
Dr. Stuart Armstrong, of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, thinks the future relationship between humans and robots is not going to turn out well for the humans.
Among the prophecies? Armstrong thinks humans could be wiped out because robots' Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) comprehension is going to be too literal. For example, the robots could interpret an instruction such as "prevent human suffering" as "kill all humans."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DDoS attacks aren't going away anytime soon. In fact, they're getting bigger, according to network security company Arbor Networks. But there's good news for potential attacks in the Internet of Things arena—some heat is off there.DDoS, or Distributed Denial-of-Service, attacks are where numerous compromised computers are used to target a single system. In simple terms, the sheer size of the blast of traffic overwhelms the system.Large attacks
Arbor Networks says that "while very large attacks are what makes headlines, average attacks are approaching one gigabit per second, and are rapidly becoming a real problem for more and more enterprises."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the big problems with fiber has always been that the more power you add to a signal—to get the signal to travel further—the more distortion you get. That distortion degrades the quality of the data.
It's a problem because ideally you want fiber to travel long distances. It's cheaper to run one long cable than multiple pieces with added repeaters, as is the current process now.Deciphering data at 12,000 km
Scientists reckon they've got a solution, though.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they've been able to send data 12,000 kilometers along fiber without repeaters and still decipher the information at the end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the big problems with fiber has always been that the more power you add to a signal—to get the signal to travel further—the more distortion you get. That distortion degrades the quality of the data.
It's a problem because ideally you want fiber to travel long distances. It's cheaper to run one long cable than multiple pieces with added repeaters, as is the current process now.Deciphering data at 12,000 km
Scientists reckon they've got a solution, though.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they've been able to send data 12,000 kilometers along fiber without repeaters and still decipher the information at the end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has defined 5G network speeds as being 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps), according to an article in the Korea Times.However, an ITU spokesperson says it will be more like 10 Gbps with peak speeds at 20 Gbps, according to a separate Fierce Wireless report.The ITU, a United Nations organization, has also come up with a name for the 5G standard – "IMT-2020."The ITU allocates global radio spectrum and is also responsible for coordinating mobile radio strategy and regulations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The slow, buffering video stream that you're seeing during some peak hours may not be caused by the technical limitations of the internet at all, according to a pro-net neutrality activist group.BattlefortheNet says it has new evidence to prove that ISPs are deliberately slowing the internet down at the interconnections between ISPs and other networks, such as Transit Providers and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), in order to leverage fees from those other networks."AT&T is not provisioning enough ports" to accept the traffic it is requesting, S. Derek Turner of Free Press told me.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Major internet Service Providers (ISPs) like AT&T and Time Warner are intentionally slowing internet service for U.S. customers, according to the Guardian.The newspaper cites a study by BattleFortheNet, a pro-net neutrality activist internet group.Degraded service
The report, released on Monday, "looked at results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers," the Guardian says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's another use for graphene—wrap transistor wires with it and boost computer chip speeds.Scientists have discovered that replacing tantalum nitride, the existing wire sheathing material between transistors, with graphene allows chips to exchange data faster.It's yet another use for this super-material. I've written about graphene before in a post titled "Materials breakthrough promises smaller chips."Thin graphite material
If you're unfamiliar with this breakthrough material, graphene is the world's most conductive substance. It's better than copper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's another use for graphene—wrap transistor wires with it and boost computer chip speeds.Scientists have discovered that replacing tantalum nitride, the existing wire sheathing material between transistors, with graphene allows chips to exchange data faster.It's yet another use for this super-material. I've written about graphene before in a post titled "Materials breakthrough promises smaller chips."Thin graphite material
If you're unfamiliar with this breakthrough material, graphene is the world's most conductive substance. It's better than copper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It seems like I was only just writing about the new, up-to-3.2 Gbps Wi-Fi routers, such as the drone look-alike D-Link DIR-890L.In fact, it was all of six-months ago, in my post, "Is it time to move to beamforming 802.11ac?"Well, that generation of wireless networking gear using beamforming and combining multiple bands, is about to be superseded. Microprocessor-maker Broadcom has launched new 5.4 Gbps-capable chips that will appear in routers later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
CEOs’ priorities are different from the rest of us when it comes to tech.
For one thing, half of U.S. CEOs worry more about new industry entrants from the technology sector disrupting their businesses, than adopting devices as a strategy, according to a recent survey from analysts PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PWC.Strategic importance
CEOs aren’t getting over-excited about devices. Investment is being made, but more CEOs thought cybersecurity was strategically more important to them that mobile, IoT and wearables, the survey found.
Mobile gets barely half of CEOs’ attention. Only 55 percent of those polled reckoned mobile tech for engagement with customers is strategically “very important” to their enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
CEOs’ priorities are different from the rest of us when it comes to tech.
For one thing, half of U.S. CEOs worry more about new industry entrants from the technology sector disrupting their businesses, than adopting devices as a strategy, according to a recent survey from analysts PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PWC.Strategic importance
CEOs aren’t getting over-excited about devices. Investment is being made, but more CEOs thought cybersecurity was strategically more important to them that mobile, IoT and wearables, the survey found.
Mobile gets barely half of CEOs’ attention. Only 55 percent of those polled reckoned mobile tech for engagement with customers is strategically “very important” to their enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Workers bringing Internet of Things (IoT) devices to work could add to future enterprise vulnerabilities, a new report says.
RAND Corporation’s latest study on cybersecurity delves into how a growing number of connected devices will add to an enterprise’s “attack surface.”
The researchers say that device protocols, of the kind used by IoT, probably won’t have gone through the same vulnerability testing as traditional software does.
And that coupled with lean start-up mentalities by developers of IoT will create devices where security is an afterthought. Devices will be functional, but “riddled with security vulnerabilities,” the report reckons.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
All of the recent hoop-la about extending smartphone battery life with special metals, using graphite batteries to charge a device in seconds, and even power-reducing microprocessors, could well be moot.Researchers at Ohio State University think that the way to extend battery life is not by improving battery tech—something we've found hard to do in comparison with other tech innovations—but by using the existing energy that's already found in the device that goes to waste.The reason: the radio signals emitted by a smartphone are a form of power.So harvest the stray signals, convert it all to DC, and squirt it back into the phone in the form of electricity, the researchers say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Living inside a machine is "definitely a possibility," according to a British neuroscientist. Dr. Hannah Critchlow,of Cambridge University, says that if a computer could be built to recreate the 100 trillion connections in the brain, it would be possible to live within programs.Critchlow's statement, at the Hay Festival, was reported by the Telegraph and Metro newspapers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Living inside a machine is "definitely a possibility," according to a British neuroscientist. Dr. Hannah Critchlow,of Cambridge University, says that if a computer could be built to recreate the 100 trillion connections in the brain, it would be possible to live within programs.Critchlow's statement, at the Hay Festival, was reported by the Telegraph and Metro newspapers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the problems with traditional data centers has always been that the servers create a lot of heat. And that waste heat needs to be disposed of to prevent server components, switches, and other parts from overheating and malfunctioning.Various solutions have been tried over the years, including building data centers near the sea so cold sea water can be used for cooling. Facebook built a site in Sweden near the Arctic Circle to take advantage of ambient cooing—it's cold up there.And of course, expensive grid-powered air conditioning is the default solution.Data furnaces
Dutch company Nerdalize reckons it's got a better answer. It suggests getting rid of data centers, distributing servers throughout communities, and using them to heat homes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Often, when we hear about Internet of Things (IoT), we think of it in terms of consumer-oriented scenarios—home security, switching lights on, fitness bands, and so on.But in fact, the IoT has room to completely transform business too. Telematics isn't just consumer-oriented.Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer presented a webinar on digital innovation recently, and in it he provided a synopsis on where he thinks IoT and business is headed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson