Month: February 2018

Enlarge / Splitting photons up into a collection of neighboring frequencies may help with quantum computation. (credit: NIST)

Way back when I started writing for Ars, experimental quantum computing had just started to take off. At the time, the big demonstrations of quantum computation were very simple calculations, performed using single photons as repositories of quantum information. Back then, demonstrating even a single logical gate was a challenge. Light ruled the roost, and charged particles were reduced to the status of not-quantum-enough.

That changed, of course. Now, all the big demonstrations make use of charged particles: little superconducting current loops, rows of ions, or others. Light, it seems, has been reduced to a way of moving qubits between charged particles.

But a recent result shows that there is life left in photon-based quantum computers and that the degree of parallelization available to a photon-based quantum computer will be difficult to beat using other qubit technologies.

Enlarge (credit: Steve Johnson)

The Federal Communications Commission's quest to prove that killing net neutrality is somehow raising broadband investment recently focused on Charter Communications.

Charter, the second largest US cable company after Comcast, "is investing more in its broadband network and workforce because of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order [that repealed net neutrality rules] and last year's tax reform legislation," FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry claimed in a tweet Friday.

But as we noted earlier this week, Charter raised its capital investment in 2017 while the net neutrality rules were in place. And with the repeal soon to take effect, Charter says it is preparing for a "meaningful decline" in spending on building and upgrading broadband networks.

Enlarge (credit: Samuel Axon)

On the evening of February 7, Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reported that code from the secure boot-up portion of  Apple's iOS mobile operating system—referred to as iBoot—had been posted to GitHub in what iOS internals expert Jonathan Levin described to the website as "the biggest leak in history.” That may be hyperbole, and the leaked code has since been removed by GitHub after Apple sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request. But the situation may still have implications for Apple mobile device security as it could potentially assist those trying to create exploit software to "jailbreak" or otherwise bypass Apple's security hardening of iPhone and iPad devices.

The DMCA notice required Apple to verify that the code was their property—consequently confirming that the code was genuine. While GitHub removed the code, it was up for several hours and is now circulating elsewhere on the Internet.

The iBoot code is the secure boot firmware for iOS. After the device is powered on and a low-level boot system is started from the phone's read-only memory (and checks the integrity of the iBoot code itself), iBoot performs checks to verify the integrity of iOS before launching the full operating system. It also checks for boot-level malware that may have been injected into the iOS startup configuration. This code is a particularly attractive target for would-be iOS hackers because—unlike the boot ROM and low-level boot loader—it has provisions for interaction over the phone's tethering cable.

Enlarge / Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games: A race to the bathroom? (credit: Getty | Mark Ralston)

With the opening ceremony set for Friday, an outbreak of the highly infectious gastrointestinal bug norovirus already has a solid lead at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in South Korea.

In just a few days, official case counts have nearly quadrupled, according to multiple reports from the New York Times. The tally was 32 just two days ago but quickly climbed to 86. Then another 42 cases were confirmed by Thursday night, bringing the total to 128 around the Olympic sites.

Officials at the games first announced the outbreak of the virus—also called the “winter vomiting bug”— on Tuesday. Security personnel were the first to test positive, and about 1,200 of the security staff were sequestered in their rooms at the time. About 1,100 people, some non-security personnel, were still in quarantine on Thursday. South Korea deployed 900 military personnel to make up for the quarantined security workers.