AI-aided alien search detects 8 “very suspicious” radio signals

It’s estimated that the universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, and each galaxy has about that many planets, so the chances are incredibly small that Earth is the only place with life. A new AI system has now scoured millions of radio signa… Continue reading AI-aided alien search detects 8 “very suspicious” radio signals

AI-enabled eye scan delivers stroke and heart disease risk scores

A team of researchers in the UK has developed a fully automated artificial intelligence-enabled system that can scan retinal images for vascular health, helping identify those at high risk of heart disease and stroke.Continue ReadingCategory: Health &a… Continue reading AI-enabled eye scan delivers stroke and heart disease risk scores

NIST’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

Quantum computing is a completely new paradigm for computers. A quantum computer uses quantum properties such as superposition, which allows a qubit (a quantum bit) to be neither 0 nor 1, but something much more complicated. In theory, such a computer can solve problems too complex for conventional computers.

Current quantum computers are still toy prototypes, and the engineering advances required to build a functionally useful quantum computer are somewhere between a few years away and impossible. Even so, we already know that that such a computer could potentially factor large numbers and compute discrete logs, and break the RSA and Diffie-Hellman public-key algorithms in all of the useful key sizes…

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SIKE Broken

SIKE is one of the new algorithms that NIST recently added to the post-quantum cryptography competition.

It was just broken, really badly.

We present an efficient key recovery attack on the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie­-Hellman protocol (SIDH), based on a “glue-and-split” theorem due to Kani. Our attack exploits the existence of a small non-scalar endomorphism on the starting curve, and it also relies on the auxiliary torsion point information that Alice and Bob share during the protocol. Our Magma implementation breaks the instantiation SIKEp434, which aims at security level 1 of the Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process currently ran by NIST, in about one hour on a single core…

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“Ghost imaging” combines human vision with AI to see around corners

X-ray vision has long been a staple power for superheroes, but soon mere mortals could see hidden objects with a little help from AI. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have demonstrated a “ghost imaging” system that reads the brainwaves of a per… Continue reading “Ghost imaging” combines human vision with AI to see around corners

On the Subversion of NIST by the NSA

Nadiya Kostyuk and Susan Landau wrote an interesting paper: “Dueling Over DUAL_EC_DRBG: The Consequences of Corrupting a Cryptographic Standardization Process“:

Abstract: In recent decades, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which develops cryptographic standards for non-national security agencies of the U.S. government, has emerged as the de facto international source for cryptographic standards. But in 2013, Edward Snowden disclosed that the National Security Agency had subverted the integrity of a NIST cryptographic standard­the Dual_EC_DRBG­enabling easy decryption of supposedly secured communications. This discovery reinforced the desire of some public and private entities to develop their own cryptographic standards instead of relying on a U.S. government process. Yet, a decade later, no credible alternative to NIST has emerged. NIST remains the only viable candidate for effectively developing internationally trusted cryptography standards…

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