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NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption
[Read an annotated description of the Penetrating Hard Targets project] The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields such as medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets. Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. “It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it,” said Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document states. Related:  Hardware

Q -Warrior brings head-up displays to the battlefield "Great battles are won with artillery" – Napoleon Bonaparte. In the 21st century, he’d probably change that to information. The trick is to get that information to soldiers on the front line quickly and in a manner that won’t distract them from the job at hand. To this end, BAE Systems’ Electronic Systems in the UK has developed the Q-Warrior – a head-up display for foot soldiers that’s designed to provide a full-color, high resolution 3D display of the battlefield situation and assets. Call it military intelligence, situational awareness, or just knowing what’s going on in the next foxhole, but information has always been a vital military asset. For the engineer, the tricky bit is coming up with something that can keep a soldier in the know without distraction. The Q-Warrior is the latest version of BAE's helmet-mounted display technology based on its Q-Sight range of display systems. The video below shows off Q-Warrior's features. Source: BAE Systems

Did this Tor developer become the first known victim of the NSA's laptop interception program? UPDATE (1/27/14): Shepard says she reached out to the seller and was told they entered the wrong tracking number. She hasn't received the package yet. She also says the new tracking details show that it has now been sent to Seattle, but to the wrong zip code, and "didn't ship until after [she] got the original notification email." That's left her unsure of "what to make of it and feeling paranoid," she told me via Twitter. Last night Andrea Shepard, a core Tor developer living in Seattle, posted this message to Twitter: The image she linked to shows the shipment tracking details for a keyboard Shepard ordered from Amazon, the global internet superstore and cloud computing giant that in late 2013 secured a $600 million contract with the CIA. As you can see, the tracking details are highly unusual. Contrary to Amazon's shipment tracking summary, Virginia is not the package's final destination. Is that all it takes to become a victim of the NSA's targeted spying?

US Army experiments with crowdsourcing equipment design The US Army Rapid Equipping Force (REF) is experimenting with internet-based collaboration. With the help of the crowdsourcing gurus at Local Motors, it has launched ArmyCoCreate.com, a website designed to let soldiers, designers and engineers collaborate on identifying soldier requirements and designing prototypes to address them. View all REF is a division of the Army that works to rapidly address the ever-evolving issues facing soldiers in the field. ArmyCoCreate is an experimental website designed to further that mission. "When we have our labs in theater, soldiers come up to the labs and the labs have capability to reach back to a lot of scientists and engineers," Gary Frost, REF Deputy Director for Futures, tells us. Local Motors' Rally Fighter REF partnered with Local Motors in August to develop the experimental crowdsourcing platform. The ArmyCoCreate trial will operate in a four-step process: problems, solutions, project and prototypes.

Marre d’être tout-e nu-e devant la NSA ? Pensez à Prism break ! | Le blog du Centre NTE Prism break n’est pas le spin-off de la série télévisée Prison Break, quoi que… mais avec vous pourrez toujours vous tatouer la liste des logiciels qui vous permettront de vous échapper de l’emprise de la NSA[1]. Et en attendant le 11 février qui sera The Day We Fight Back. Vous trouverez des alternatives aux plus grands logiciels et services ne respectant pas votre vie privée comme GMail, Facebook, Windows, Twitter, Flickr, Skype, et Cie. Voici par exemple ce qui est dit sur le système d’exploitation Windows: Windows Attention : Microsoft Windows est affecté par PRISM. Le slogan de la série du projet: Refusez PRISM, le programme de surveillance globale des données de la NSA. Le site du projet: Voir aussi: Le 11 février sera The Day We Fight Back MàJ: pour aller plus loin il y a aussi : NSA-observer et NSA : nos applications mobiles sont-elles minées ? [1] : La NSA a aussi piraté des ordinateurs non-connectés

US plans for hypersonic robot spy plane revealed 4 November 2013Last updated at 06:44 ET The SR-72 could be capable of flying at Mach 6 said Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin has begun work on a successor to the supersonic Blackbird SR-71 spy plane. The unmanned SR-72 will use an engine that combines a turbine and a ramjet to reach its top speed of Mach 6 - about 3,600mph (5,800km/h). Like its predecessor, the SR-72 will be designed for high-altitude surveillance but might also be fitted with weapons to strike targets. Lockheed said the aircraft should be operational by 2030. Jet engines The SR-72 is being developed at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works R&D centre in California that designed and built the original Blackbird. That aircraft first flew in 1964 and was a mainstay of US Air Force spying and surveillance work until 1998. In a blogpost about the SR-72, Lockheed Martin said the aircraft would operate at similar altitudes but would fly far faster.

See All The Companies That Are Tracking You On Facebook — And Block Them U.S. military wants to create 'Iron Man suit' WASHINGTON — Army Capt. Brian Dowling was leading his Special Forces team through a steep mountain pass in eastern Afghanistan when insurgents ambushed his patrol, leaving two of his soldiers pinned down with life-threatening wounds. After a furious firefight, the two men were rescued, but that episode in 2006 would change Dowling's life. Now employed by a small defense company, he is part of a crash effort by U.S. They call it — what else? "We're taking the Iron Man concept and bringing it closer to reality," said Dowling, referring to the Marvel Comics character Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer who builds a rocket-powered exoskeleton, turning himself into a superhero. The Special Operations Command began soliciting ideas for the suit this year from industry, academia and government labs, and has held two conferences where potential bidders, including Dowling's company, Revision Military, demonstrated their products. Armored suits, of course, go back to ancient times.

Google, toujours l’ami des créateurs de contenu [Cet article fait partie de la série : tendances marcom à étudier en 2014] En 2012 et 2013, Google a fait figure de chevalier blanc défendant l’information et terrassant les outrecuidants SEO black hat et autres pourvoyeurs de contenu de qualité inférieure. Ses 1000 (et plus) modifications d’algorithmes, dont les plus emblématiques portaient les doux noms de Penguin, Panda et Hummingbird, ont détruit des empires de fermes de liens, canardé les liens cachés dans les communiqués publiés sur des sites tiers, houspillé le publireportage, pourfendu le contenu creux … Il y a quelques jours à peine, Matt Cutts déclarait la fin du blog invité comme pratique viable de netlinking, provoquant à nouveau ire et angoisse chez ceux qui en avaient fait un axe de développement (le plus souvent innocent et bénéfique). Produisez du contenu de qualité et nous lui accorderons une forte visibilité Image creative commons (c) Kumasawa Et si tout ça, c’était des salades ? Un écosystème bientôt universel Nest ou HAL ?

US Navy announces sea trials for electromagnetic railgun Watching old war movies, we expect firing a navy gun to be accompanied by a deafening bang and a dramatic cloud of burnt powder. This being the 21st century, the US Navy has other ideas as it prepares to install and test a prototype electromagnetic railgun on a Spearhead-class joint high speed vessel (JHSV) in 2016 as part of a program to develop the naval artillery of the future. Modern missiles are miracles of range, accuracy and lethality, but they are also incredibly complex and expensive with a single shot costing millions of dollars. Old-fashioned projectile weapons are cheaper, but also much less effective. They have shorter ranges, less accuracy, and still need dangerous-to-handle propellants to fire them. According to the US navy, what is needed is something with an effectiveness comparable to that of a missile, but with costs per round less than that of conventional naval artillery. This is where the EM railgun comes in. The video below shows a railgun in action. Source: US Navy

Conseils pour bien préparer son hackathon autour d'un projet libre L’équipe d’OpenHatch organise régulièrement des rencontres, ateliers, événements, sprints, hackathons, etc. invitant de nouveaux contributeurs à participer au développement de logiciels libres. Elle nous livre ici le fruit de son expérience. L’enthousiasme et la motivation sont indispensables mais ne peuvent faire l’économie d’une solide organisation et réflexion en amont. Happy Hacking :) Note : On remarquera que les deux livres cités en référence pour aller plus loin font partie de nos traduction Framabook : Libres conseils et Produire du logiciel libre. Le guide de l’événement libre in situ The In-Person Event Handbook L’équipe OpenHatch - février 2014(Traduction : Omegax, zak, François, Jean-Marc Gailis, Ju, MrTino, Wan, Asta, François, goofy, amha) Faire en sorte que votre projet soit prêt pour de nouveaux contributeurs Il semble que chaque jour apparaisse un nouvel atelier, hackaton ou autre sprint, où des projets open source sont invités à travailler avec de nouveaux contributeurs.

XM8 Lightweight Carbine The XM8 Lightweight Carbine was intended to replace existing M4 carbine and select 5.56x45mm and 9mm weapons in the US Army arsenal. The system during its development was alternately known as the Future Combat Rifle, Lightweight Assault Rifle, and expanded into a family of weapons known as Modular Assault Weapon System or Modular Assault Weapons Family, designated as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon's (OICW) Increment 1. The formal XM8 nomenclature, however, was Carbine, 5.56mm: Lightweight, XM8, and referred only to that configuration. The XM8, originally intended just as a lightweight carbine, was eventually expanded into a true family of weapons with different barrel lengths designed to address all the needs of an infantry squad. Internally, the XM8 uses a rotary locking bolt system that functions and fieldstrips like those used in the M16 rifle and M4 carbine. The XM8 was also more reliable. ATK Integrated Defense was the system integrator on the XM8 program.

US Navy developing laser weapons for ground vehicles The US Navy is deploying its first laser weapon on the USS Ponce in a few months. Called LaWS, it uses fiber-optic, solid-state laser as both an offensive and defensive weapon against drones, missiles, and other targets. The technology also has obvious potential for ground vehicles – a fact that hasn't escaped the US Marine Corps. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has awarded contracts to develop a similar laser weapon that can be installed in light-tactical vehicles instead of ships as part of its Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move (GBAD) program and the Marine Corps Science and Technology Strategic Plan. “We can expect that our adversaries will increasingly use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and our expeditionary forces must deal with that rising threat,” says Colonel William Zamagni, acting head of ONR's Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism Department. Source: ONR

Meet the SLAM-ER April 2, 2006 Meet the appropriately named SLAM-ER the Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response weapon. The most accurate weapon in the U.S. Navy inventory, the SLAM-ER, is an air-launched, day/night, adverse weather, over-the-horizon missile, which can be used in fire-and-forget mode, in which case it will use GPS to deliver its 500-pound warhead, with frightening precisionanywhere within 275 kilometres from its launch point. The clever aspect of the SLAM-ER though, is that it can use the warfighter-in-the-loop meaning it can fly a pre-planned or target-of-opportunity route to the target area and be retargeted in flight by using global positioning system data and an infrared seeker with an advanced data link. View all An example of the capabilities of the SLAM-ER weapon was demonstrated recently in long-range testing by the US Navy. In another test, a SLAM-ER was launched for the first time from an operational U.S. The U.S. SLAM-ER is currently sold to the U.S.

XM25 Prototypes in testing – 500% lethality increase over existing weapon systems May 27, 2005 The XM25 Advanced Airburst Weapon System is an entirely new class of weapon that takes the concept of a grenade launcher and adds some smarts, thereby increasing the probability of hit-to-kill performance by up to 500 percent over existing weapons. The advanced design allows the soldier to program the air bursting 25mm round so that it flies to the target and detonates at a precise point in the air. It does not require impact to detonate and is hence capable of defeating an enemy behind a wall, inside a building or in a foxhole. Alliant Techsystems has delivered the first six prototype XM25 advanced airbursting weapon systems to the U.S. The XM25 is ideal for urban combat. The revolutionary fire control system for the XM25 employs an advanced laser rangefinder that transmits information to the chambered 25mm round. The XM25 increases the warfighter’s probability of hit-to-kill performance by up to 500 percent over existing weapons. About the Author 9 Comments

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