Over 642 brilliant cryptographic minds gathered for Real World Crypto 2020, an annual conference that brings together cryptographic researchers with developers implementing cryptography in the wild. Overall, RWC 2020 was an impressive conference that demonstrated some amazing work. Here we explore three major themes that emerged:

Lets dig in!

Yet another Bleichenbacher attack was presented: The 9 Lives of Bleichenbachers CAT:

New Cache ATtacks on TLS Implementations. (Which brings us to a fourth theme: Cryptographers still love using tortured puns and silly acronyms.) The attack leverages Bleichenbachers attack on PKCS#1 v1.5 padding for RSA key exchanges. Specifically, the attack takes advantage of the fact that many companies reuse certificates across multiple servers, so the Bleichenbacher attack can be parallelized and thus completed before the 30-second session timeout occurs.

Unfortunately, this insecure padding scheme is still supported by ~6% of the internet; further, a man-in-the-middle downgrade attack can be performed, so any server that supports a vulnerable implementation can be broken 100% of the time (and this works even if the client does not support RSA key exchange).

Another talk, SHA-1 is a Shambles, discussed a chosen-prefix collision on SHA-1, and showed that SHA-1 can now be attacked in practice with affordable hardware. The authors used this vulnerability to perform an impersonation attack on PGP. This project was the culmination of several years of work, with theoretical attacks discovered in the early 2000s, and the first practical attack found in the 2017 paper, SHAttered. In other words, SHA-1 shall never be used again (ok, coming up with puns is harder than it looks).

Two different attacks on secure hardware were presented at RWC: one on a hardware security module (HSM) and another on a trusted platform module (TPM). The first attack targeted a specific HSM model and was able to (among other things) perform arbitrary code execution and decrypt all secrets. Although the attack itself was not heavily cryptographic, the talk demonstrated (yet again) that we cannot necessarily trust that our cryptographic secrets will be safe on HSMs. The second talk combined a timing side-channel attack with a lattice attack on ECDSA to recover the private signing key, demonstrating that TPMs are unfortunately not side-channel resistant.

Meanwhile, Pseudorandom Black Swans: Cache Attacks on CTR DRBG demonstrated that random number generators are also vulnerable to side-channel attacks. The cache attack leverages two problems with CTR_DRBG: Keys are not rotated fast enough, and adding more entropy is optional (and chosen by the API caller). This means keys can be compromised, and if inadequate entropy is used, an attack can then obtain all future states. These attacks were not a part of the previous standards threat model; fortunately, FIPS 140-3 updates this threat model.

From all of these attacks, the lesson is to involve more cryptographers and think about a variety of threat scenarios when designing your system (and in the case of the last talk, use Hash_DRBG). Several RWC 2020 presentations confirmed this. For instance, we saw how CRLite, a scalable system for TLS revocations, was achieved through academic and industrial collaboration. On the other hand, two different cryptographic reviews of e-voting systems and an analysis of the handshake protocol in WPA3 showed the dangers of too few cryptographic cooks.

CRLite, the system for TLS revocations, started as an academic design and Firefox extension proof of concept; from there industry improved on the scheme, taking into account infrastructure that exceeded the means of academia alone. Now there is a working prototype and development is progressing while academia continues to refine the protocol.

More promising news came from model-checking 5G security: Our tools are sufficiently advanced that standardization now can and should be accompanied by formal models and analysis. This idea was pioneered by the symbolic analysis of TLS 1.3, and its great to see the trend continuing. These types of analysis are very powerful for protocols and standards, as they ensure that security goals are clearly stated and achieved by the protocol.

In the case of 5G, the security goals were not clearly stated in the initial conception of the protocol. The RWC 2020 presentation, A Formal Analysis of 5G Authentication, specified the security goals more clearly, which led to the discovery that 5G does not achieve untraceability (perhaps this is bad after all!). Nevertheless, this work serves as an important demonstration and should be replicated for future standardization efforts.

Dragonblood: Analyzing the Dragonfly Handshake of WPA3 and EAP-pwd makes a pretty compelling case for involving cryptographers in protocol design. WPA2 is vulnerable to offline dictionary attacks, and WPA3 was proposed as the improvement. However, Dragonblood found that WPA3 is vulnerable to side-channels, and, according to the authors of the paper, WPA3 does not meet the standards of a modern security protocol. To make matters worse, the countermeasures are costly and may not be adopted. Worst of all, as the authors state, these issues could have been avoided if the protocol design process was open to more cryptographers.

Theres plenty of ugliness in the world of e-voting, as the talks at RWC 2020 confirmed. In one analysis of the Moscow internet voting system, two significant breaks to the encryption scheme were found within a somewhat constrained time frame. For example, the first break resulted from an insecure variant of ElGamal dubbed Triple ElGamal, which attempted to achieve 768-bit security, but actually achieved three separate instances of 256-bit security, which can be broken in under 10 minutes using CADO-NFS.

Both breaks cited were fixed; however, the fixes to the second break were published only two days before the election, and the technology was still deployed. The general impression of the presenter was that the voting scheme achieved no privacy, very partial verifiability, no coercion resistance, and no protection against vote-buying. Although the Russian government should be commended for opening their source code, it is clear that more cryptographers should have been involved in this entire process.

Similar work on the Switzerland internet voting system led to the discovery of some significant cryptographic bugs. The protocol uses a zero-knowledge proof system to achieve both privacy and verifiability; however, due to a flaw in their Fiat-Shamir transformation, none of the zero-knowledge proofs were sound. Further, parameters were generated incorrectly in a way that could allow for votes to be modified. Even worse, statements were malformed for their zero-knowledge proofs, which broke their security proofs. This result is not ideal. However, to be fair, it is great to see cryptographers involved, as critical issues were spotted before deployment in Switzerland (and revealed similar issues to non-public systems in other countries).

Its not all bad; our cryptographic capabilities are growing quickly! And RWC 2020 displayed some fascinating efforts to apply cryptography to real world problems.

Earlier this year, Apple released a new Find My feature in iOS 13 that allows offline devices to be located while protecting privacy of both the owner and the finder of the device. Previously, similar features like Find My Phone required the device to be online, a serious limitation, particularly for devices like MacBooks which are typically offline. The cryptography behind this feature was presented at RWC 2020. Apple sought a protocol that achieved the following goals:

To achieve this, the protocol calls for offline devices to broadcast public keys via Bluetooth. Active devices become finders, and when other offline devices are discovered via Bluetooth, the finder encrypts its location using the offline devices public key and sends it to the cloud. This way, even the server does not know the locationhowever, IP-based information does leak to the server, and Apples only promise is that they do not store logs of this information.

The owner can then access the time and location of their offline device whenever there is an active device in its vicinity. (There are more subtleties to the protocol to achieve the remaining security goals, such as key rotation). In summary, Apple specified rigorous security and privacy goals, and constructed a novel design in their attempt to achieve them.

Protocols for Checking Compromised Credentials presented a formal security analysis of two protocols for checking compromised credentials: HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) and Google Password Checkup (GPC). These protocols aim to alert users if their credentials have been breached and shared across the web. GPC maintains an active database of username and password pairs for users to query. HIBP, on the other hand, only maintains passwords.

Since these databases contain hundreds of millions of records, both protocols implement a bucketization strategy, where hash values corresponding to records are sorted into buckets, based on their hash prefix. This allows users to query the database with a hash prefix, receive a bucket of hash values, and check if their credentials have been compromised, without revealing their entire hash of their secret to the server. The study presented at RWC 2020 demonstrated that each protocol leaks noticeable information about user secrets due to their bucketization strategiesboth protocols leak information for different, subtle reasons. Luckily, the study also produced mitigation strategies for both protocols.

RWC even included some cryptographic applications that are out of this world. Galileo is a global navigation satellite system (like GPS) used by the European Union. As discussed at RWC, these navigation systems are a critical part of our infrastructure, and spoofing location is actually fairly easy. Luckily, so far, this spoofing is mostly used for playing Pokemon Go; however, spoofing attacks on these satellite systems are real. To protect against potential future attacks, Galileo will offer a public navigation message authentication service.

The final talk at RWC discussed using multi-party computation to detect money laundering. Financial regulators impose large fines on banks if they allow money laundering activities, so these banks are incentivized to detect illegal activities. However, collaboration between banks is difficult because transaction data is private. Fortunately, multi-party computation can facilitate this collaboration without violating privacy. Overall, this effort achieved promising results by applying a graph-based approach for modeling transactions and algorithms specialized for multi-party computation for efficient, collaborative analysis between various banks.

RWC 2020 made it clear that involving cryptographers in the design and implementation of your novel protocols will save you both time and money, as well as keeping everyone safer. If youre involved in this type of work encourage everyone involved to open-source your code, publish your protocols for review, and hey, talk to the Trail of Bits cryptography team!

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Trail of Bits Blog authored by James Miller. Read the original post at: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/01/23/themes-from-real-world-crypto-2020/

Read more:
Themes from Real World Crypto 2020 - Security Boulevard

Shweta Agrawal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has become one of the 14 recipients of the Swarnajayanti Fellowship 2020. It wasinstituted by the Centre to commemorate the golfen jubilee of India's independence and is funded by the Department of abd Technology.

Agarwal said she would like to use the fellowship to conduct a deep study on one of the most promising approaches for post-quantum cryptography lattice-based cryptography to improve algorithms and understand gaps between theory and practice. Lattice-based cryptography, resistant to attack by both classical and quantum computers,is the leading candidate for post quantum cryptography and design of a cryptographic system for the future.

Cryptography is a branch of theoretical computer science that seeks to provide guarantees to the art of secret keeping. This field balances itself on the tightrope of mathematical beauty on one side, and practical importance on the other. The scientific charm of this field lies in the deeply paradoxical questions it poses.

The simplest goal of cryptography is to hide information so that learning a message from a cryptographically sealed envelope implies a solution to some well known mathematical problem. By suitably choosing the underlying mathematical problems to be difficult, we may rest assured that an attackers chances of learning secret information are extremely small.

Typically, an attacker is modelled as a classical computer. However, recent times have seen significant advances in the construction of quantum computers, which are based on the laws of quantum rather than classical physics. Most modern-day cryptography relies on the difficulty of problems which, while difficult for classical computers, are efficiently solvable by quantum computers. Thus, most modern-day cryptography breaks down if quantum computers are used by the attacker.

A few weeks ago, Google claimed to have demonstrated quantum supremacy by constructing a quantum computer that can experimentally demonstrate a massive speedup over a classical computer. Soon after, Chinese researchers claimed that they expect to demonstrate quantum supremacy by next year. Thus, the advent of quantum computers has crossed the realm of scientific fantasy and looms as a real threat in the near future. Therefore, it is imperative to redesign cryptography ground up to resist quantum computersthat is, to design post-quantum cryptography. This is the focus of Agrawals work. (DST media cell)

Developing expertise in post-quantum cryptography is of national importance. Aside from its practical importance, this is a rich and emerging area of cryptography, and construction of state of the art systems in this field can significantly enhance the visibility of India in the global arena. Not only does her proposed work help create intellectual property, but it also creates expertise within the country that will lead to intelligent post-quantum cryptography design for the use of our government, military, industry and society alike.

In her current work, Agrawal has provided constructions of advanced cryptographic protocols that are believed to be resistant to quantum computers. She has particularly focused on the emerging field of computing on encrypted data, which may allow (for instance), machine learning algorithms to be run on encrypted genetic data, leading to advances in the field of personalized medicine. Such algorithms, if realised efficiently, can have wide applications in areas as diverse as medicine, governance, social sciences, and many others, leading to an elegant synthesis of disparate sciences.

This is a young field, and there are significant gaps in the understanding of this area. Her research agenda is to tackle fundamental questions in lattice based cryptography, to endeavour to fill in these gaps. She hopes to create national expertise in lattice based cryptography that will benefit society by creating knowledge and applications alike.

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Originally posted here:
IIT Madras student to improve algorithms in lattice cryptography - Down To Earth Magazine

Groundbreaking Invention Introduced in Nature Communications

CUP Sciences to Lead Commercialization

In the 100-plus years since the concept of "perfect secrecy" in cryptography was first proposed in 1917, no organization has been able to implement perfect secrecy that can operate on classical communication networks, until now. Nature Communications recently published a paper from the Center for Unconventional Processes of Sciences (CUP Sciences) working with the University of St. Andrews and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) that details their working chip-based prototype of "perfect secrecy" and demonstrates that it is unbreakable, no matter how computational power evolves in the future.

Authors from the three institutions stated, "We have rigorously demonstrated a protocol for a perfect secrecy cryptography that uses CMOS-compatible silicon chips, which transmit information on a public classical optical networkCombined with the technological maturity, speed and scalability of classic optical communications, the results shown open a pathway towards implementing perfect secrecy cryptography at the global scale with contained costs."

The "perfect secrecy-on-a-chip" technology was not developed with traditional engineering and is unbreakable under any condition. Using chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, the chip transmits and measures signals at the speed of light and has an almost unlimited capacity of generating signals for each communication.

In traditional hacking, the objective is to obtain the key, which with enough time and effort can be obtained, providing access to the communication. Keys generated by the "perfect secrecy" chip, which unlock each message, are never stored or communicated with the message and cannot be recreated, even by the users themselves. The silicon chips contain complex structures that are irreversibly changed for each communication, sending information in a one-time key that can never be intercepted by an attacker.

A review of the invention in Optics and Photonics News, published by the Optical Society of America (OSA), stated that "The eavesdropper, attempting to hack into the communication with complete knowledge of the system and using all of the same equipment, obtained only white noise in her decoded image."

World-Class Team Behind the Invention

U.S.-based CUP Sciences is responsible for coordinating the next steps of development of the technology among the inventing institutions and for the commercialization of technologies resulting from it. The company was co-founded by co-inventor of the technology Dr. Aluizio M. Cruz, who brought the conceptual approach to the project, with the other institutions developing the theory, fabricating the technology, and testing it.

Dr. Cruz has been working with complexity for decades, since the age of 17. Prior to founding CUP Sciences, he worked as chief industrial engineer on large-scale multi-government projects in Japan and Europe. Over the years, he developed several inventions related to new concepts for data communication and energy. Together with co-founder, attorney and entrepreneur Quelita Moreno, he formed CUP Sciences to apply these inventions towards commercialization to address the challenging and critical issues of society, such as energy, water and pollution.

"We have successfully reimagined an entirely new way to develop technology, working in concert with the inherent principles operating in the laws of physics and randomness. Because of this, our technologies scale exponentially, rather than linearly, creating breakthroughs in efficiencies of energy and cost," said Dr. Cruz.

"With the advent of more powerful quantum computers, all current encryptions will be broken in very short time, exposing the privacy of our present and, more importantly, past communications, unless we think differently," says Andrea Fratalocchi, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at KAUST, and leader of the study.

"Our solution can protect communications exchanged by users separated by any distance and is based on a mature and fully scalable technology which is ready to deploy," said Professor Andrea Di Falco of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St. Andrews, first author of the study.

Story continues

Companys First Technology Focused on Cybersecurity

A recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that global damages from cybercrime will rise to $6 trillion annually by 2021. To address this, CUP Sciences first technology is focused on security, anticipating applications ranging from the financial industry, protecting ecommerce and banking, to energy, supporting smart grids and cities.

"Our microchip providing perfect secrecy will be the first of a host of complexity-based technologies that we will move toward commercialization, validating our disruptive approach," said Ms. Moreno. "CUP Sciences partner, PERA Complexity, will contribute with go-to-market strategy and commercialization. We look forward to identifying additional partners and investors who will work with us to bring this and other important technologies to the world."

If you are interested in getting involved in the development and commercialization of CUP Sciences technologies, please contact the company at ac.qm@cupsciences.net.

About CUP Sciences

Los Angeles-based CUP Sciences is pioneering the commercialization of an entirely new field of hardware-based, software-embedded technologies based on complexity that address critical global challenges of sustainable development. The companys upcoming technologies will be new concepts for clean energy generation and storage, and carbon reduction with the potential to revolutionize the clean energy sector, and are expected to create dramatic efficiencies and cost savings over traditional technologies.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200123005209/en/

Contacts

Michelle McAdamChronic Communications, Inc.michelle@chronic-comm.com (310) 902-1274

Continued here:
"Perfect Secrecy" Encryption Technology, Invented by U.S.-Based CUP Sciences and Partners, Set to Transform Cybersecurity - Yahoo Finance

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In the 100-plus years since the concept of perfect secrecy in cryptography was first proposed in 1917, no organization has been able to implement perfect secrecy that can operate on classical communication networks, until now. Nature Communications recently published a paper from the Center for Unconventional Processes of Sciences (CUP Sciences) working with the University of St. Andrews and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) that details their working chip-based prototype of perfect secrecy and demonstrates that it is unbreakable, no matter how computational power evolves in the future.

Authors from the three institutions stated, We have rigorously demonstrated a protocol for a perfect secrecy cryptography that uses CMOS-compatible silicon chips, which transmit information on a public classical optical networkCombined with the technological maturity, speed and scalability of classic optical communications, the results shown open a pathway towards implementing perfect secrecy cryptography at the global scale with contained costs.

The perfect secrecy-on-a-chip technology was not developed with traditional engineering and is unbreakable under any condition. Using chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, the chip transmits and measures signals at the speed of light and has an almost unlimited capacity of generating signals for each communication.

In traditional hacking, the objective is to obtain the key, which with enough time and effort can be obtained, providing access to the communication. Keys generated by the perfect secrecy chip, which unlock each message, are never stored or communicated with the message and cannot be recreated, even by the users themselves. The silicon chips contain complex structures that are irreversibly changed for each communication, sending information in a one-time key that can never be intercepted by an attacker.

A review of the invention in Optics and Photonics News, published by the Optical Society of America (OSA), stated that The eavesdropper, attempting to hack into the communication with complete knowledge of the system and using all of the same equipment, obtained only white noise in her decoded image.

World-Class Team Behind the Invention

U.S.-based CUP Sciences is responsible for coordinating the next steps of development of the technology among the inventing institutions and for the commercialization of technologies resulting from it. The company was co-founded by co-inventor of the technology Dr. Aluizio M. Cruz, who brought the conceptual approach to the project, with the other institutions developing the theory, fabricating the technology, and testing it.

Dr. Cruz has been working with complexity for decades, since the age of 17. Prior to founding CUP Sciences, he worked as chief industrial engineer on large-scale multi-government projects in Japan and Europe. Over the years, he developed several inventions related to new concepts for data communication and energy. Together with co-founder, attorney and entrepreneur Quelita Moreno, he formed CUP Sciences to apply these inventions towards commercialization to address the challenging and critical issues of society, such as energy, water and pollution.

We have successfully reimagined an entirely new way to develop technology, working in concert with the inherent principles operating in the laws of physics and randomness. Because of this, our technologies scale exponentially, rather than linearly, creating breakthroughs in efficiencies of energy and cost, said Dr. Cruz.

With the advent of more powerful quantum computers, all current encryptions will be broken in very short time, exposing the privacy of our present and, more importantly, past communications, unless we think differently, says Andrea Fratalocchi, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at KAUST, and leader of the study.

Our solution can protect communications exchanged by users separated by any distance and is based on a mature and fully scalable technology which is ready to deploy, said Professor Andrea Di Falco of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St. Andrews, first author of the study.

Companys First Technology Focused on Cybersecurity

A recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that global damages from cybercrime will rise to $6 trillion annually by 2021. To address this, CUP Sciences first technology is focused on security, anticipating applications ranging from the financial industry, protecting ecommerce and banking, to energy, supporting smart grids and cities.

Our microchip providing perfect secrecy will be the first of a host of complexity-based technologies that we will move toward commercialization, validating our disruptive approach, said Ms. Moreno. "CUP Sciences partner, PERA Complexity, will contribute with go-to-market strategy and commercialization. We look forward to identifying additional partners and investors who will work with us to bring this and other important technologies to the world.

If you are interested in getting involved in the development and commercialization of CUP Sciences technologies, please contact the company at ac.qm@cupsciences.net.

About CUP Sciences

Los Angeles-based CUP Sciences is pioneering the commercialization of an entirely new field of hardware-based, software-embedded technologies based on complexity that address critical global challenges of sustainable development. The companys upcoming technologies will be new concepts for clean energy generation and storage, and carbon reduction with the potential to revolutionize the clean energy sector, and are expected to create dramatic efficiencies and cost savings over traditional technologies.

Read more:
Perfect Secrecy Encryption Technology, Invented by U.S.-Based CUP Sciences and Partners, Set to Transform Cybersecurity - Business Wire

When Dfinity raised $102 million in funding in 2018 at a $2 billion valuation in a round jointly led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, it was thought of as a step change in the world of blockchain technology. In an area that was synonymous with generating a lot of headlines around cryptocurrency speculation, this was a shift in focus, looking instead at the architecture behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and the rest, and how it could be used for more than just mining, distributing and using new financial instruments with a major, mainstream VC backing the idea, no less.

Dfinity launched with a very lofty goal: to build what it called the Internet Computer: a decentralized and non-proprietary network to run the next generation of mega-applications. It dubbed this public network Cloud 3.0.

Now, it looks like this Cloud is now about to break.

In Davos this week, Dfinity launched the Bronze edition of its Internet Computer, a limited release that takes the startup one step closer to its full commercial release, expected later this year.

And to prove out the concept of how an application would run on its new network, Dfinity today demonstrated an open social network called LinkedUp.

The startup has rather cheekily called this an open version of LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social network for professionals. Unlike LinkedIn, LinkedUp, which runs on any browser, is not owned or controlled by a corporate entity.

LinkedUp is built on Dfinitys so-called Internet Computer, its name for the platform it is building to distribute the next generation of software and open internet services.

The software is hosted directly on the internet on a Switzerland-based independent data center, but in the concept of the Internet Computer, it could be hosted at your house or mine: the compute power to run the application LinkedUp, in this case is coming not from Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure, but is instead based on the distributed architecture that Dfinity is building.

Specifically, Dfinity notes thatwhen enterprises and developers run their web apps and enterprise systems on the Internet Computer, the content is decentralised across a minimum of four or a maximum of an unlimited number of nodes in Dfinitys global network of independent data centers.

And while the company initially was described as a blockchain-based system, thats also had some refinement. A spokesperson describes the Internet Computer as a next-generation distributed computing system similar to its Mainframe, Client Server, and Public Cloud predecessors that is based on cryptography.

WhileDFINITYis not building a traditional blockchain/smart contract platform, it uses advanced cryptographyin its consensus layer [of the Internet Computer stack] to ensure apps and workloads have the same security guarantees as Bitcoin or Ethereum, the spokesperson added, but its network of independent data centres ensures the speed and scale required by corporates and entrepreneurs. The Internet Computer also has governancetokens to ensure the ownership of the technology is distributed, he said.

LinkedUp is a test case for all of this, and soDfinity is open-sourcing LinkedUp for developers to create other types of open internet services on the structure it has built.

This open social network for professional profiles suggests that, on Dfinitys model, one could create an Open WhatsApp, Open eBay, Open Salesforce or Open Facebook.

(Good news, since LinkedIn might not be so happy about a lookalike service with a name and layout that also looks very familiar, were it to go much further as a commercial endeavor. While we cant comment specifically on any proposed trademark, LinkedIn does monitor and take action as necessary to protect our trademarks, a spokesperson said.)

Big tech has hijacked the internet and stifled innovation by owning the proprietary infrastructure and user relationships, said Dominic Williams, founder and chief scientist at Dfinity in a statement. As a result, a handful of for-profit companies have created a monopolistic and closed internet. The Internet Computer provides a means to rebuild internet services in open form.

So perhaps what we should be calling this is not LinkedUp, but more a new sort of Linux for the cloud.

Dfinity claims the application was built by 1.5 engineers in three weeks, thus demonstrating how easy the infrastructure is to use.

The tools include a Canister Software Developer Kit and a simple programming language called Motoko that is optimized for Dfinitys Internet Computer.

The Internet Computer is conceived as an alternative to the $3.8 trillion legacy IT stack, and empowers the next-generation of developers to build a new breed of tamper-proof enterprise software systems and open internet services. We are democratizing software development, Williams said. The Bronze release of the Internet Computer provides developers and enterprises a glimpse into the infinite possibilities of building on the Internet Computer which also reflects the strength of the Dfinity team we have built so far.

Dfinity says its Internet Computer Protocol allows for a new type of software called autonomous software, which can guarantee permanent APIs that cannot be revoked. When all these open internet services (e.g. open versions of WhatsApp, Facebook, eBay, Salesforce, etc.) are combined with other open software and services it creates mutual network effects where everyone benefits.

We quizzed Dfinity a little more on all this and asked whether this was an actual launch.

A spokesperson told us: Since our first major milestone of launching a terminal-based SDK and new programming language called Motoko by the co-creator of WebAssembly on 1 November, DFINITY has released 13 new public versions of the SDK, to our second major milestone [at WEF Davos] of demoing a decentralized web app called LinkedUp on the Internet Computer running on an independent data center in Switzerland. Subsequent milestones towards the public launch of the Internet Computer will involve (1) on-boarding a global network of independent data centers, (2) fully tested economic system, and (3) fully tested Network Nervous Systems for configuration and upgrades.

It also looks like Dfinity will not be raising more money just yet.

But the question is how they plan to woo people to it? Dfinity has been working with a select group of Fortune 500 companies, strategic consultancies, systems integrators, venture capitalists, and universities, the company said.

We are not sure that will quite suffice to take out Facebook, LinkedIn and all the other tech giants, but were fascinated to see how this plays out.

See the original post:
Dfinity launches an open-source platform aimed at the social networking giants - TechCrunch

Bengaluru-headquartered information technology solutions provider Mphasis on Thursday announced a partnership with Israel-based QEDIT to offer privacy-enhancing technology solutions on Blockchain to enterprises.

QEDIT is an enterprise solution provider that uses privacy-enhancing technology and Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to help companies transact and leverage their business data in a privacy-compliant manner, Mphasis said.

Under this partnership, the two entities will co- innovate and develop ZKP solutions to enable enterprises fight fraud, verify identities, and uphold compliance with local data privacy regulations, it said in a statement.

All this while preserving full control over proprietary and confidential information, Mphasis, specialising in cloud and cognitive services, said.

Blockchain is structured in a way that anyone with access to a blockchain transaction can view data provided across all nodes.

This inherent principle of transparency is an obstacle for companies that wish to gain efficiencies using a shared ledger, but simultaneously need to protect confidential transactional details.

QEDITs Private Asset Transfer solution employs ZKPs, a cryptographic algorithm that enables Party A to share the proof of knowledge with Party B without sharing the underlying data itself, the statement said.

This technique can be leveraged by Mphasis clients in regulated industries, especially financial services.

QEDITs solution can be integrated into large application projects for Mphasis Financial Services clients, it was stated.

ZKP solutions are slated to demand techniques that secure information further on blockchain and Mphasis believes ZKP will become that horizontal layer of security for digital identification, it said.

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Originally posted here:
Mphasis inks pact with QEDIT to offer privacy-enhancing tech - The Hindu

Data breaches are one of the major concerns of organisations these days. The technology advancement has increased the risk of data security, for instance, the increased IoT deployments in India has raised cyber attacks by 22 percent in 2019. Also, Indian organizations have lost about 12.8 crores on an average due to these data breaches within a year. Data breaches have turned out to be a serious problem to the organizations these days , but how can data be preserved in this technological era is a million-dollar question at present. But sadly, data breaches preventive measures are a way to less. To protect their data, individuals could set up stronger passwords, frequently track credit card statements, histories and so on. Thus, technology could be utilized to address this issue. Blockchain is an ideal technology that could enhance the security of the organizations.

Embracing blockchain enables organizations to create immutable, decentralized ledger which could drastically reduce the chances of data breaches. In order to protect the data, organizations could use encryption. But, that just provides an extra layer of security to the system which is not reliable as compared to the security offered by the technologies. But, blockchain ensures extreme security since it offers a special feature known as Cryptography. In combination with decentralization, cryptography provides an additional layer of protection to the users. Furthermore, cryptography is an intricated algorithm, which replicates firewall for attacks, thus, aids in preventing various data breaches.

The data stored in the blockchain is hashed cryptographically; this process hides the original content of the data. Every block in the chain has a unique hash and contains the hash of the previous block. By interlinking, the hash addresses blockchain technology eliminates the possibility of manipulating or tampering of the data stored in the structure. To access the data stored in this structure a private key is provided, but transactions require public key thus, tightens the security. Also, hashing is very complicated which restricts data altering or reversing. Additionally, the private key holders are restricted to access the operations granted for public keys holders. Thus, makes the access permission much stricter.

With proper implementation of blockchain technology, the organizations could counter the data attacks. This technology could aid individuals to protect their personal data, and save the organizations from highly expensive cyberattacks.

View post:
Will Blockchain be the Solution for Data Breaches? - Siliconindia.com

Subaru Celebrates Outstanding Science Writing and Illustration for Children and Young Adults Through the "Subaru Loves Learning" Initiative

CAMDEN, N.J., Jan. 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Subaru of America, Inc., along with the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), announced the winners of the 2020 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books. A powerful and visually spectacular evolution story of animal survival; a one-of-a-kind look into the mysterious lives of owls; an introduction to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes; and the art of cracking ciphers and cryptography are the stories told by the winners of the 2020 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books.

Subaru of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Announce the 2020 AAAS/Subaru Book SB&F Prize Winners. Pictured: Middle Grades Science Book Winner - Owling: Enter the World of Mysterious Birds of the Night, by Mark Wilson.

The award program, now in its 15th year, aims to spur the creation of new, high-quality books about science for children of all ages. Awards are given in four categories: children's science picture book, middle grades science book, young adult science book and hands-on science book. The prizes are presented to the authors, except in the case of the picture book award, which is given to both the author and the illustrator. As part of the Subaru Loves Learning initiative, Subaru and AAAS will donate the winning books to K-12 schools across the country through their local participating Subaru retailers. Last year, Subaru along with 541 retailers, participated and donated over 91,000 books to local schools. Since the program's inception in 2015, the Subaru Loves Learning initiative has provided over 278,000 books to K-12 schools across the country.

"At Subaru, we believe education is a fundamental right and are dedicated to supporting organizations, like AAAS, tobroaden the world of children through the study of science and innovation," said Thomas J. Doll, President and Chief Executive Officer, Subaru of America Inc. "Through the Subaru Loves Learning initiative and our partnership with AAAS, Subaru of America and our retailers have been able to provide an enriching and more accessible science education for K-12 schools by helping to recognize and donate books that enlarge the world of science for children. We congratulate this year's award winners, whose books will inspire the next generation of science leaders."

Judged by panels of librarians, scientists and educators, the winning works feature accurate science and cannot perpetuate misconceptions or stereotypes. The criteria also require that each book be age-appropriate: For the youngest readers, a winning picture book should pique their curiosity about the natural world around them; for older readers, books should encourage the discussion and understanding of scientific ideas. Hands-on science books for any age must include inquiry-based activities that encourage problem-solving skills.

Winners will be honored at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. in February.

The Winners:

Children's Science Picture BookMoth: An Evolution Story, by Isabel Thomas. Illustrated by Daniel Egnus. Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019.

Mothis the remarkable evolution story that captures the struggle of animal survival against the background of an evolving human world in a unique and atmospheric introduction to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. Against a lush backdrop of lichen-covered trees, the peppered moth lies hidden. Until the world begins to change... Along come people with their magnificent machines which stain the land with soot. In a beautiful landscape changed by humans how will one little moth survive? A clever picture book text about the extraordinary way in which animals have evolved, intertwined with the complication of human intervention. This remarkable retelling of the story of the peppered moth is the perfect introduction to natural selection and evolution for children.

Story continues

Middle Grades Science BookOwling: Enter the World of the Mysterious Birds of the Night, by Mark Wilson. Storey Publishing, 2019.

From Hedwig, the Snowy Owl of Harry Potter fame, to Winnie-the-Pooh's beloved friend Owl, this wide-eyed bird of the night has found its way into young hearts and imaginations everywhere. Owling invites young readers into the world of real-life owls, to learn about their fascinating behaviors and abilities. Wildlife photojournalist and nature educator Mark Wilson presents a one-of-a-kind look into the mysterious lives of these distinctive birds. Dramatic images of the 19 owl species of North America nesting, flying, hunting, and catching prey are accompanied by information about the birds' silent flight, remarkable eyes and ears, haunting calls, and fascinating night life. Kids will learn how to spot owls; identify their calls, plumage, and pellets; and even carry on a hooting conversation with a nearby owl.

Young Adult Science BookNever Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live, by Rob Dunn. Basic Books, 2018.

Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone. Yet, as we obsess over sterilizing our homes and separating our spaces from nature, we are unwittingly cultivating an entirely new playground for evolution. These changes are reshaping the organisms that live with usprompting some to become more dangerous, while undermining those species that benefit our bodies or help us keep more threatening organisms at bay. No one who reads this engrossing, revelatory book will look at their homes in the same way again.

Hands-On Science BookCan You Crack the Code?: A Fascinating History of Ciphers and Cryptography, by Ella Schwartz. Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019.

Codes can carry big secrets! Throughout history, lots of good guys and lots of bad guys have used codes to keep their messages under wraps. This fun and flippable nonfiction features stories of hidden treasures, war-time maneuverings, and contemporary hacking as well as explaining the mechanics behind the codes in accessible and kid friendly forms. Sidebars call out activities that invite the reader to try their own hand at cracking and crafting their own secret messages. This is the launch of an exciting new series that invites readers into a STEM topic through compelling historical anecdotes, scientific backup, and DIY projects.

About Subaru of America, Inc.Subaru of America, Inc. (SOA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Subaru Corporationof Japan. Headquartered at a zero-landfill office in Camden, N.J., the company markets and distributes Subaru vehicles, parts and accessories through a network of more than 630 retailers across the United States. All Subaru products are manufactured in zero-landfill production plants and Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc. is the only U.S. automobile production plant to be designated a backyard wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. SOA is guided by the Subaru Love Promise, which is the company's vision to show love and respect to everyone, and to support its communities and customers nationwide. Over the past 20 years, SOA has donated more than $120 million to causes the Subaru family cares about, and its employees have logged more than 40,000 volunteer hours. As a company, Subaru believes it is important to do its part in making a positive impact in the world because it is the right thing to do.

For additional information visit media.subaru.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About AAASThe American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine; Science Signaling; a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances; Science Immunology; and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For additional information about AAAS, see http://www.aaas.org.

Diane Anton Subaru of America, Inc. 856-488-5093 danton@subaru.com

Anne Q. Hoy AAAS 202-326-6696 ahoy@aaas.org

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