Even if you’re a hardcore #DeleteFacebook-er, you’re probably guilty of using your worn out Facebook account to log into the occasional app—just for the convenience factor alone. Now, the company’s offering a bit more insight into how these tools function.
Sibling rifts are more common than you may think, family therapists say.
Despite his many personality flaws, Wolverine is still one of my favorite Marvel characters. Having his entire skeleton replaced with Adamantium certainly didn’t help his attitude, I’m sure. On the plus side, it gave him some epic claws. Now, you can enjoy your corn on the cob just like Wolverine with these official Corn on the Claws.
Rather than the ordinary yellow corn on the cob skewers, these ones feature Wolverine’s blue-gloved hand with three pointy claws sticking out and ready to take on even the most defiant cob. And before you go complaining that they only have three claws on each one, I went and double-checked, and Logan only had three claws poking out of his knuckles too. For some reason, I thought he had more.
Sadly, they’re not made from actual Adamantium, so don’t go around expecting these to be indestructible. Fortunately, they’re cheap, so you can always buy more. 10 bucks will buy you four pairs of Corn on the Claws, and you can pre-order them now over on Gamestop. They’re expected to start shipping on 1/29/20.
[via Laughing Squid]
With the incredible miniaturization of portable SSD storage, you can carry several libraries worth of data in your pocket. But the mix of increased capacity and pocketable form factor creates security risks equally important.
Enter Lokly, a startup building a highly secure USB key that encrypts and decrypts data in real-time as you read or write to it. During CES last week, I met Benoit Berthe, the CEO of Lokly at the French Tech Pavilion, to get a better idea of the security features of its new encrypted USB drive.
There are a number of potential competitors who offer similar functionality on the surface, but Lokly aims to be different in several areas, and the company’s goal for the near future is to get military-grade clearance from ANSSI, the French National Information Security Agency, which is basically the French version of the NSA.
The Lokly USB key in its locked state
When we challenged Lokly with the fact that there are many USB keys that use password or biometrics to AES-encrypt data, Lokly points out that there are security details and real-world usage models that users should pay attention to.
Products that use a strong password often induce a lot of friction because users must remember and type such passwords often (here’s how to generate a strong password, easy to remember), and we know that in practice, many people end up leaving their data unencrypted for that reason, including myself.
“OEMS SOMETIMES HAVE LAX BIOMETRIC SECURITY TO MAKE IT WORK IN THE REAL WORLD (BENOIT BERTHE)”
Lokly’s CEO says that reduce the user experience frictions, manufacturers are often tempted to make the biometric features a little bit laxer (less secure) to account for dirty fingerprints, eyeglasses, new haircut, lousy lighting, and other life realities.
At the end of the day, this means using less biometric data, which is like shortening the length of a password, and that weakens the security to an extent.
The Lokly app uses secure Bluetooth communications to unlock the key after tapping on the Connect button
Lokly wants to solve this by using the phone and an app as the key to the secures USB data. Phone security is well understood, and users are often highly motivated to keep their phones secure for privacy reasons. There can be multiple locks layers (SIM lock, screen lock, app lock) and a hacker would need physical access to the phone and bypass all these layers.
The key is now unlocked
Some folders are mounted on the PC as Read-Only
The Lokly app communicates with the USB key over a secure Bluetooth connection. From there, it is possible to mount different directories to the PC (“Personal,” “Business,” and more) and perform basic file management tasks (delete file, etc.).
File-level operations can be done directly via the mobile app, no PC needed
If the phone’s distance to the USB key is too great (~10 yards/meters), the BT connection is severed (Geofencing), and the USB key returns to “locked” mode. This takes care of situations like a lost key or someone snatching it and running away. Of course, the user can also choose to lock the key right from the mobile app when work is done.
Here’s the company’s official presentation video:
Another thing to be mindful of is that many encrypted USB keys use the host PC processor to encrypt/decrypt data.
This allows such USB keys to reach much higher throughput, but could also enlarge the attack surface for potential hackers, primarily if you use the USB key on a system that you don’t control (public computer, loaner, your client or business partner computer etc.).
An attacker could potentially intercept data by using a hacked storage driver to gain access to information during the data exchange between the secure key and the PC. “You need to have a high degree of confidence in the host PC,” says Benoit Berthe.
“YOU NEED TO HAVE A HIGH DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE IN THE HOST PC”
For that reason, the Lokly key is entirely autonomous and encrypts/decrypts everything using its internal ST Micro hardware platform. It’s true that the peak throughput is lower, but the potential for attack is reduced compared to solutions that require the help of the host PC processor.
In fact, Lokly is so paranoid about the host computer that its USB-key has a female full-size connector to perform key to key copies, without going through a PC.
Lokly says that it has a throughput of 10 MBps (MegaBytes per second) when reading data, and 5 MBps when writing it. That’s the reason why the product has a USB 2.0 connector that can transfer unencrypted data at a maximum rate of 60 MBps.
If you look around, it is common to find PC-size military bulk encryption systems with peak rates of less than 40 MBps (DSD 72A-P, for example).
It’s not evident that such hardware could work within a USB key power envelope, but the point is: with more money and higher production volumes, speed can be improved.
For a startup, pursuing such expensive capital expenditure doesn’t seem like a good idea, but if a large OEM was to license this technology, it would be a whole different game.
If you are less paranoid, consumer-level AES-256 encryption USB keys typically use the powerful host computer’s CPU to handle the encryption. Not only they run at extremely high frequencies (GHz), but they also have a dedicated instruction set to accelerate AES encryption operations. An embedded processor is no match for that kind of power, and these SSDs experience little impact from the encryption workload.
Finally, Lokly says it has a mechanism to thwart USB hacks in which a hacker would attempt to place malware onto the key. Because many operating systems execute some actions when a key is plugged to a computer (open the directory, look or preview the files, etc.), there are a high number of possible USB-related hacks.
Lokly says that its key can defend itself against “all hardware attacks,” a bold claim that we cannot vouch for, but worth investigating if you are potentially at risk.
Depending on your security requirements and risk scenarios, Lokly is worth considering. At 240 Euros, it’s not cheap, so if you are “just” afraid to lose your key, perhaps a regular encrypted key might suffice.
“ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE (ANDY GROVE, INTEL)”
For business users who don’t want to take any chances with their trade secrets against a potentially sophisticated attack, the extra cost of the key and its relatively low data speed is probably negligible in relation to the possible damages.
It may seem overly cautious, but the Silicon Valley mantra “only the paranoid survive” really applies in many high-stakes situations where the theft of data could have a lasting impact on a company or government.
Lokly Encrypted USB Key For The Most Paranoid Users , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Xnor.ai, spun off in 2017 from the nonprofit Allen Institute for AI (AI2), has been acquired by Apple for about $200 million. A source close to the company corroborated a report this morning from GeekWire to that effect.
Apple confirmed the reports with its standard statement for this sort of quiet acquisition: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” (I’ve asked for clarification just in case.)
Xnor.ai began as a process for making machine learning algorithms highly efficient — so efficient that they could run on even the lowest tier of hardware out there, things like embedded electronics in security cameras that use only a modicum of power. Yet using Xnor’s algorithms they could accomplish tasks like object recognition, which in other circumstances might require a powerful processor or connection to the cloud.
CEO Ali Farhadi and his founding team put the company together at AI2 and spun it out just before the organization formally launched its incubator program. It raised $2.7M in early 2017 and $12M in 2018, both rounds led by Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group, and has steadily grown its local operations and areas of business.
The $200M acquisition price is only approximate, the source indicated, but even if the final number were less by half that would be a big return for Madrona and other investors.
The company will likely move to Apple’s Seattle offices; GeekWire, visiting the Xnor.ai offices (in inclement weather, no less), reported that a move was clearly underway. AI2 confirmed that Farhadi is no longer working there, but he will retain his faculty position at the University of Washington.
An acquisition by Apple makes perfect sense when one thinks of how that company has been directing its efforts towards edge computing. With a chip dedicated to executing machine learning workflows in a variety of situations, Apple clearly intends for its devices to operate independent of the cloud for such tasks as facial recognition, natural language processing, and augmented reality. It’s as much for performance as privacy purposes.
Its camera software especially makes extensive use of machine learning algorithms for both capturing and processing images, a compute-heavy task that could potentially be made much lighter with the inclusion of Xnor’s economizing techniques. The future of photography is code, after all — so the more of it you can execute, and the less time and power it takes to do so, the better.
It could also indicate new forays in the smart home, toward which with HomePod Apple has made some tentative steps. But Xnor’s technology is highly adaptable and as such rather difficult to predict as far as what it enables for such a vast company as Apple.
Last year was the second warmest recorded year since humans started keeping track of global temperatures in the late 1800s, according to a joint release from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The space agency says that it and NOAA conducted independent analyses of the data and both came to the same conclusion. At this point in … Continue reading
Researchers have discovered a method with which they’re able to create living bricks that turn carbon dioxide into CaCO3, the main ingredient for cement. Studies with Synechococcus cyanobacteria (we’ll just refer to it as bacteria from here on out) showed great potential for future building projects when used in combination with sand, carbon dioxide, and a specific range of humidity … Continue reading
Bassist Mike Mills derided Trump after two of the group’s songs were played at the president’s latest reelection rally.
Science fiction is, in many ways, an extremely horny genre. The futures it depicts are ones where we have grown beyond the confines of our planet, reached into the stars, often met new civilizations…and promptly got the hots for them. So it should come to the surprise of no one that Star Trek, one of sci-fi’s most…
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