Monthly Archives: February 2017

BOFFINS AT THE University of Ottawa claim that quantum computing may not provide the virtually 'unbreakable' security that it has been claimed the technology could offer.

Physicists at the University claim that they were able to build a "quantum cloning machine" that was able to intercept a "secure quantum message".

Their research suggests that initiatives such as China's dedicated quantum encryption network, which will supposedly provide secure communications between Beijing, Shanghai and a number of cities in between when it is finished at the end of the year, might not provide the security that its designers had planned.

"Our team has built the first high-dimensional quantum cloning machine capable of performing quantum hacking to intercept a secure quantum message," said University of Ottawa Department of Physics professor Ebrahim Karimi.

"Once we were able to analyse the results, we discovered some very important clues to help protect quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats."

Quantum systems were believed to provide secure data transmission because, until now, attempts to copy the transmitted information resulted in an altered or deteriorated version of the original information, thereby defeating the purpose of the initial hack.

In conventional computing, anyone can simply copy-and-paste information and replicate it exactly. But this doesn't hold true in the quantum computing world, where attempts to copy quantum information - or qudits* - result in what Karimi refers to as "bad" copies.

Professor Karimi's team was able to clone the photons that transmit information, namely the single carriers of light known as qubits, as well as quantum theory allows, meaning that the clones were almost exact replicas of the original information.

At the same time, though, the researchers' analyses also revealed some clues as to how to protect against such hacking.

"What we found was that when larger amounts of quantum information are encoded on a single photon, the copies will get worse and hacking even simpler to detect," said Frdric Bouchard, a University of Ottawa doctoral student.

"We were also able to show that cloning attacks introduce specific, observable noises in a secure quantum communication channel. Ensuring photons contain the largest amount of information possible and monitoring these noises in a secure channel should help strengthen quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats."

Interest in quantum computing has been escalating for years as advances in conventional computing power slows down. Last week, a University of Surrey scientist published a blueprint for a large-scale quantum computer, while commercial developer D-Wave Systems has started to sell its 2000 qubit device to organisations that need to perform particular calculations at speed.

* The term "qudit" is used to denote a unit of quantum information in a d-level quantum system.

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Boffins create quantum cloning machine to intercept 'secure ... - The INQUIRER

We all know what cloning is. Scientists have been experimenting with physical cloning, and there are even experiments with "mind cloning" that some believe could be the key to immortality.

But, it goes without saying, the concept of cloning can be pretty scary. While science may still be decades away from accomplishing the impossible with physical cloning, scammers are using a form of digital cloning to trick people online.

This particular form of cloning is appearing primarily on Facebook, but can also show up on other social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. For the purposes of this article, we'll refer to it as "Facebook cloning," but keep this in mind so you can watch for it on other sites across the internet.

What is Facebook cloning, exactly? It's the act of copying someone's Facebook profileand using it to conduct scams across the web. The scary thing is, anyone could be targeted and have their profile photos and details stolen. In most cases, without even knowing about it.

Note: Facebook cloning isn't the only Facebook scam you need to watch out for. Click here and read this article before you take another Facebook quiz.

By stealing your photos and details from your profile, such as where you work, where you went to school, when you were born and your relationship status, cybercrooks are often able to convince your real contacts to accept your "Friend request." Any that do accept have just given hackers the permission they need to snoop through their photos and clone their profiles too. And the cycle continues from there.

The cloning itself is only part of the scam, which could take months or even years to pull off. Hiding behind their fake profiles, the scammers study and mimic the communication styles of your true contacts, until eventually, they've learned enough to put on an even more convincing act.

Imagine receiving a private message from an old roommate from college. She's in trouble. She's trying to get home, but her purse was just stolen. She couldn't think of anyone else to reach out to but you.

For many, this request would stand out as odd, but under the right circumstances, there are plenty of people who fall for it. This old "friend," of course, isn't truly a friend at all. It's a wolf hiding in sheep's clothing.

The first way to avoid this scam, and the most obvious, is to confirm that all profiles are real before you accept anyone's friend request. Use the search feature on Facebook to pull up their page and see how many friends the person has, and when the account was created. Fake accounts will likely have just been created within a few weeks or months, and chances are, the scammers won't take the time to build up a massive Friends list.

If you see anything that looks suspicious, don't accept the friend request. If you have the contact information (either a phone number or an email address) of the real person, reach out to confirm outside of Facebook.

Next, you need to edit your Facebook profile to ensure that it's private. (Click here for 3 essential Facebook privacy checks you need to do right now.) You also need to remove any unnecessary information about your private life. Delete your phone number, home address, and these three additional details that put your privacy at risk.

Lastly, if you have a Facebook account that you no longer use, you need to delete it. Old, unused accounts leave you at risk of having your private information stolen by hackers, and even through massive data breaches. If you're not sure how to delete your old Facebook account, click here and we'll walk you through the steps.

How to sell your stuff on Facebook Marketplace instead of Craigslist

How to see (and erase) your Facebook search history

5 ways to lock down your Facebook account for maximum security

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Watch out for this crazy Facebook cloning scam! - Komando

The American novelist S. E. Hinton once said, If you have two friends in your lifetime, youre lucky. If you have one good friend, youre more than lucky. By that logic, boxer crabs are the luckiest creatures alive because they can turn one good friend into two by tearing it in half.

These tiny, inch-long crabs carry sea anemones, holding them in place with special hooks on the inner edges of their claws. With their crowns of wavy tentacles, the anemones look like pom-poms, and the crabs like cheerleaders. But those tentacles also pack powerful stings, and a quick jab from them is often enough to ward off an attacking fish. Hence the name: boxer crabs.

Most crabs gather food with their powerful claws, but boxer crabs have adapted so thoroughly to holding anemones that their claws are now feeble, delicate tweezers rather than powerful, crushing pincers. Instead, they rely on their anemones. Some species use the anemones like cutlery, dabbing them onto morsels of food and then bringing them over to their mouths. Others wait for the anemones to passively ensnare food, which they then scrape into their mouths with their front legs. If you remove the anemones, as Yisrael Schnytzer and his colleagues from Bar Ilan University have repeatedly done, the crabs struggle to gather enough to eat.

The anemones, however, flourish apart from the crabs. When Schnytzer freed them from the crabs grasp, their colors got brighter, their tentacles became longer, and they more than doubled in size. Left to their own devices, they can grow far bigger than the crabs that once held them. In the words of Schnytzers colleague Ilan Karplus, the crabs cultivate Bonsai anemones, deliberately stunting their growth to keep them at a manageable size.

But how do the crabs get their anemones in the first place? In 1905, zoologist James Edwin Duerden, in what remains the most thorough account of boxer crab habits, noticed a clue. He wrote that there appeared to be evidence that these crabs will tear a single anemone in two to provide one for each claw. Karplus saw similar signs a few decades ago. He noticed that if he took away one of a crabs two anemones, and came back a few days later, it would once again have two anemonesalbeit smaller ones.

He and Schnytzer have now caught several crabs in the act of dividing their partners. It takes around 20 minutes, and the technique is simple: The crab grabs the anemone in both claws, stretches it outwards, and uses its legs to slice through the middle. And since anemones can regenerate their bodies, each half eventually became a complete animal in its own right. The crab, by bisecting its partner, also clones it.

This explains why wild boxer crabs, even very young ones, almost always have two anemones. As long as a crab can get is claws on one, it can easily make a second. And if it has none at all, as Schnytzer found, it can steal a fragment from another crab. Its remarkable that these anemones are such a crucial commodity that small, juvenile crabs will actually initiate fights with larger crabs to steal their anemonesand will often win, says Kristin Hultgren from Seattle University.

These kinds of fights must happen a lot in the wild. The particular species of boxer crab that Schnytzer studied carries a species of sea anemone that has never been seen on its own in the wild. And yet the crabs always have them, so maybe they all steal them from one another.

Is this how the anemones reproduce? Perhaps partly. But they seem to fall into at least three distinct genetic lineages, and if they only reproduced by crab-cloning, the entire population would be genetically identical. That suggests the anemones do reproduce on their own, Schnytzer says. You can imagine that they could release sperm and eggs into the water, and still breed [while] being held by the crabs.

It seems that the anemonestheir food stolen, their growth stunted, and their bodies regularly torn in twoget very little out of their co-existence with the crabs. Then again, weve never found them free-living, says Schnytzer. If they cant manage on their own, presumably they need the crabs for something.

Randy Brooks from Florida Atlantic University, who has studied the relationships between sea anemones and other animals, says that some species are only found on the shells of hermit crabs. Those anemones, Brooks found, are capable of reproducing by splitting themselves in half, so perhaps the boxers are only accelerating a process that their anemone partners would naturally undergo. I've always wished I could work with the boxer crabs, Brooks says.

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This Crab Clones Its Allies by Ripping Them in Half - The Atlantic