Encryption

The Australian government yesterday passed a bill allowing law enforcement agencies to compel tech companies to hand over encrypted messaging data. The legislation has been broadly condemned with suggestions it could not only harm the Australian tech industry, but undermine encryption worldwide.

In an expansive submission to the Australian Parliament, Apple has strongly condemned the government’s prospective anti-encryption legislation, arguing “this is no time to weaken encryption,” and calling the draft outline “extraordinarily broad” and “dangerously ambitious.”

Quantum encryption can make data breaches literally impossible, and in a new demonstration of that kind of security, scientists have now used the Chinese satellite Micius to send quantum-encrypted data between China and Austria. That brings the world another step closer to a global quantum internet.

No matter how many notices are pinned around the office, some workers will forget to lock their computers when away from their desks. The Halberd will automatically take care of such things, wirelessly locking a workstation when a user strays beyond its range and granting access upon return.

DNA security is a looming problem that scientists and researchers are only just starting to grapple with. A team at Stanford has now developed a way to "cloak" irrelevant genomic information, allowing scientists to access key data without revealing an individual's broader genome sequence.

A recent revelation about the Westminster Bridge attacker's use of WhatsApp has rekindled the controversial debate over whether tech companies should implement backdoors that allow governments access to encrypted information on digital devices.

According to the experts, quantum cryptography is the most secure way to send data. Based on the laws of physics, any attempt to steal a quantum key not only changes it but also alerts the sender and receiver. So why not use it to make mobile transactions more secure, if not, hack-proof?​​

Using atoms of the rare-earth element europium, scientists from the Australian National University have shattered previous records for quantum information retention by creating a storage device capable of holding quantum state information for up to six hours at a time.

Most QR codes do the same thing – when a smartphone scans them with its camera, they trigger that phone's web browser to navigate to a given website. In the near future, however, they may be used to securely display 3D images on the user's phone, without even involving the internet.

Encrypted phone calls and texts are no longer just the domain of the expert or the "bad guy." Gizmag looks at free or inexpensive apps designed to secure your texts and phone calls from man-in-the-middle attacks, provider backdoors, and the weaknesses of plain text MMS.

A new device is set to make unbreakable, quantum-based cryptographic security available for everyone for the very first time. To do this, the device incorporates the quantum mechanics of random photon polarization to generate random numbers and create cryptographic keys.

The privacy of the online data has been a hot topic over the last year. In order to protect against unwanted snooping, a group of scientists has created a new secure email service. ProtonMail provides end-to-end encryption, meaning that even the company itself can't see your messages.