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Microsoft Goes Quantum Computing
Software giant Microsoft is focusing a lot of its R&D money on quantum computing.
Peter Lee, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Research said that Quantum computing is “stupendously exciting right now.”
Apparently it is Microsoft Research’s largest area of investment and Lee is pretty certain it is on the verge of some major scientific achievements.
“There’s just hope and optimism those scientific achievements will lead to practical outcomes. It’s hard to know when and where,” Lee said.
This is the first we have heard about Redmond’s quantum ambitions for a while. In 2014 the company revealed its “Station Q” group located on the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus, which has focused on quantum computing since its establishment a decade ago.
We sort of assumed that Microsoft would not get much work done on Quantum states because faced with a choice most cats would rather die in a box rather than listen to Steve Ballmer. But we guess with a more cat friendly CEO it is moving ahead.
Lee said that he has explained quantum computing research to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella by comparing it with speech processing. In that field, Microsoft researchers worked “so hard for a decade with no practical improvement,” he said. Then deep learning brought about considerable leaps forward in speech recognition and Microsoft was in on the ground floor.
“With quantum, we’ve made just gigantic advancements making semiconductor interfacing, allowing semiconductor materials to operate as though they were superconducting. What that means is the possibility of semiconductors that can operate at extremely high clock rates with very, very little or no heat dissipation. It’s just really spectacular.”
Courtesy-Fud
Windows Malware Hides In iOS App
Windows malware slipped past Apple’s eye and has been found tucked into software available on the company’s iOS App Store.
Although the malware, labeled a worm by Microsoft and tagged as “Win32/VB.CB” by the company, is harmless against Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems, it may pose a threat to iTunes customers who download iPhone and iPad apps to their Windows PCs before syncing to their mobile devices.
A user reported Win32/VB.CB to Apple’s support forum around 10:30 a.m. ET Tuesday. The user, identified only as ”deesto,” said that his or her OS X antivirus warned that “Instaquotes-Quotes Cards for Instagram” was infected.
Symantec Admits Network Was Hacked
Symantec today reversed course away from earlier statements regarding the theft of source code of some of its flagship security products, now admitting that its own network was breached.
In a statement provided to the Reuters news service, the security software giant acknowledged that hackers had broken into its network when they stole source code of some of the company’s software.
Previously, Symantec had denied that its own network had been breached, and instead pointed fingers at an unnamed “third party entity” as the attack’s victim. Evidence posted by a hacker nicknamed “Yama Tough” — a self-proclaimed member of a gang calling itself “Lords of Dharmaraja” — indicated that the information was obtained from a server operated by the Indian government.
Two weeks ago, Symantec spokesman Cris Paden said that the hacker made off with source code of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2, enterprise products between five and six years old.
Yahoo Messenger Flaw Exposed
December 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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An unpatched Yahoo Messenger vulnerability that allows hackers to change people’s status messages and possibly perform other unauthorized functons can be exploited to spam malicious links to a large number of users.
The flaw was discovered in the wild by security researchers from antivirus vendor BitDefender while investigating a customer’s report about unusual Yahoo Messenger behavior.
The flaw appears to be located in the application’s file transfer API (application programming interface) and allows attackers to send malformed requests that result in the execution of commands without any interaction from victims.
“An attacker can write a script in less than 50 lines of code to malform the message sent via the YIM protocol to the attacker,” said Bogdan Botezatu, an e-threats analysis & communication specialist at BitDefender.
“Status changing appears to be only one of the things the attacker can abuse. We’re currently investigating what other things they may achieve,” he added.
Victims are unlikely to realize that their status messages have changed and if they use version 11.5 of Yahoo Messenger, which supports tabbed conversations, they might not even spot the rogue requests, Botezatu said.
This vulnerability can be leveraged by attackers to earn money through affiliate marketing schemes by driving traffic to certain websites or to spam malicious links that point to drive-by download pages.
Hacker Writes Trojan For Apple’s Mac
As Apple’s popularity continues to increase, so too does the malicious interest of hackers in their famed products. Researchers at Sophos say they’ve uncovered a new Trojan horse program written for the Mac.
It’s called the BlackHole RAT (the RAT part is for “remote access Trojan”) and it’s pretty easy to find online in hacking forums, according to Chet Wisniewski a researcher with antivirus vendor Sophos. There’s even a YouTube video demo of the program that details what its capable of doing.
Sophos hasn’t seen the Trojan used in any online attacks -it’s more a bare-bones, proof-of-concept beta program right now – but the software is pretty easy to use, and if a criminal could find a way to get a Mac user to install it, or write attack code that would silently install it on the Mac, it would give him remote control of the hacked machine. Read More….
‘Ransomware’ Malware Threats Increasing
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A particularly nasty type of attack named”ransomware” is on the rise, with antivirus vendor Symantec seeing at least three new variants appearing in recent months. Such attacks often use viruses to not only steal a person’s sensitive or financial information, but also to disable hard drives and demand money to restore them.
“Threats that use extortion can be some of the most aggressive and, in some cases, offensive viruses encountered,” said Symantec security researcher Gavin O Gorman in a blog post.
Unfortunately for computer owners, attackers continue increase the sophistication levels of their ransomware. For example, GPCoder.G, which first appeared in November 2010, is a small (only 11 kilobytes ) piece of malware which, if executed, searches a hard drive for files with specific extensions, relating to everything from videos and Microsoft Office files to images and music. It then encrypts the first half of all files found, using a symmetric RSA encryption algorithm and a random key. The random, private key is then encrypted using a public key. “Without the private key from this key pair, it is not possible to obtain the symmetric key in order to decrypt the files,” said O Gorman.
To get the private key, the ransomware victim must forward the encrypted symmetric key to attackers, who decrypt and return it. Unfortunately, aside from restoring the encrypted files from a backup, “there is no way to bypass this technique,” he said. Read More….
Conflicker Worm Still Wreaking Havoc
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Security firm fighting the dreadful Conflicker worm claim that they have it on the ropes. The team of computer-security researchers said they managed to neutralize the worm’s impact by blocking its ability to communicate with its developer, who is still anonymous.
Unfortunately after years of trying fighting the Conflicker, security experts estimate the worm infects between five million to fifteen million computers. The Conficker worm, showed up in 2008. The worms intent is to disable a computer’s security measures, including Windows software updates and antivirus protection, leaving machines vulnerable to more malicious software. Read more….