The CALEA system, designed in the U.S. for mass surveillance, has become a global threat. Telecom equipment with "back doors" isn't just an American issue—it's a worldwide risk. Trusting the "good guys" is naive; any end with "back doors" can be a target. Encryption is our defense, and we must be careful about what we buy. #security #technology

How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary

Metadata

• Author: Stephen Ornes
• Category: rss
• URL: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/

Highlights

Three, as Schoolhouse Rock! told children of the 1970s, is a magic number. Three little pigs; three beds, bowls and bears for Goldilocks; three Star Wars trilogies. You need at least three legs for a stool to stand on its own, and at least three points to define a triangle.

If a three-state system is so efficient, you might imagine that a four-state or five-state system would be even more so. But the more digits you require, the more space you’ll need. It turns out that ternary is the most economical of all possible integer bases for representing big numbers.

Surprisingly, if you allow a base to be any real number, and not just an integer, then the most efficient computational base is the irrational number e.

Despite its natural advantages, base 3 computing never took off, even though many mathematicians marveled at its efficiency. In 1840, an English printer, inventor, banker and self-taught mathematician named Thomas Fowler invented a ternary computing machine to calculate weighted values of taxes and interest. “After that, very little was done for years,” said Bertrand Cambou, an applied physicist at Northern Arizona University.

Why didn’t ternary computing catch on? The primary reason was convention. Even though Soviet scientists were building ternary devices, the rest of the world focused on developing hardware and software based on switching circuits — the foundation of binary computing. Binary was easier to implement.

Highlights

The first scaling crisis happened in 1996, when Linus wrote that he was "buried alive in emails". It was addressed by adopting a more modular architecture, with the introduction of loadable kernel modules, and the creation of the maintainers role, who support the contributors in ensuring that they implement the high standards of quality needed to merge their contributions.

The second scaling crisis lasted from 1998 to 2002, and was finally addressed by the adoption of BitKeeper, later replaced by Git. This distributed the job of merging contributions across the network of maintainers and contributors.

In both cases, technology was used to reduce the amount of dependencies between teams, help contributors keep a high level of autonomy, and make it easy to merge all those contributions back into the main repository, Bernhard said.

Technology can help reduce the need to communicate between teams whenever they have a dependency on another team to get their work done. Typical organizational dependencies, such as when a team relies on another team’s data, can be replaced by self-service APIs using the right technologies and architecture, Bernhard mentioned. This can be extended to more complicated dependencies, such as infrastructure provisioning, as AWS pioneered when they invented EC2, offering self-service APIs to spin up virtual servers, he added.

Another type of dependency is dealing with the challenge of merging contributions made to a similar document, whether it’s an illustration, a text, or source code, Bernhard mentioned. This has been transformed in the last 15 years by real-time collaboration software such as Google Docs and distributed versioning systems such as Git, he said.

Anyone trying to scale an agile organization should study lean thinking to benefit from decades of experience on how to lead large organizations while staying true to the spirit of the agile manifesto, he concluded.

Good slides on how to reduce risks

Highlights

In analyzing 138 actively exploited vulnerabilities in 2023, Google Mandiant reported Oct. 15 that 70% of them were zero-days, indicating that threat actors are getting much better at identifying vulnerabilities in software.

It’s a worrying trend in and of itself, but what caused even more concern among security analysts was that Google Mandiant also found that the time-to-exploit (TTE) — the time it takes threat actors to exploit a flaw — was down to a mere five days in 2023 compared with 63 days in 2018-19 and 32 days in 2021-22.

Resurfaced in my feed. Obvious in retrospect.

Some interesting research

Researcher Christina Bodin Danielsson calls open office landscapes a “sea of ​​slaves.”

^^ more like tin can :)

Highlights

Iran’s multifaceted approach in the cyber domain allows Iran to project power and influence in the Middle East while avoiding direct conventional military confrontations with stronger adversaries. Iran uses cyber operations to complement its broader geopolitical strategies, often employing cyber espionage and sabotage to gain strategic advantages or to retaliate against sanctions and military threats. As Iran increasingly incorporates AI technologies into its cyber operations, the likelihood of more disruptive and damaging activities escalates, presenting a substantial challenge not only to regional stability but also to global security.

Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s death marked a significant turning point in Iran’s cyber strategy, pushing Tehran to assert its power and influence through increased cyber activities aimed at the U.S. and its allies

Cyber proxy groups use various tactics to create negative psychological effects among adversaries. APTs such as Mint Sandstorm use precise targeting to create unease among a specific group of people. Iran also uses “faketivists,” which are groups that commit cyberattacks for a specific cause, like hacktivists, but are borne from a specific geopolitical event and are created by a nation-state to perpetuate narratives that support their cause. Faketivists can be nation-state actors and/or proxy groups associated with the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The cyberattacks in Israel that have deployed faketivists have had mixed success, but they have garnered both local and global support. The purpose of these groups is to spread their “success” and to create disruption and attention, regardless of actual operational success.

Looking ahead, we can expect Iran to further integrate AI into its cyber strategy, escalating the frequency and sophistication of attacks, particularly on critical infrastructure and democratic processes. Additionally, the growing alignment between Iran and other global cyber powers, such as Russia and China, further increases the sophistication and reach of its cyber capabilities, presenting significant challenges for those attempting to counter these evolving threats.

In a statement on Tuesday, ILA President Harold Daggett said the union is “now demanding $5 an hour increase in wages for each of the six years of a new ILA-USMX Master Contract. Plus, we want absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semi-automation, and we are demanding all Container Royalty monies go to the ILA.”

A strong majority of Americans across the political spectrum sympathize more with Ukraine than Russia in the ongoing war: 62% of respondents express more sympathy with Ukraine than Russia, including 58% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats. At the same time, just 2% of respondents said they sympathized more with Russia in the conflict, including 4% of Republicans and 1% of Democrats. Republicans (20%) were more likely than Democrats (7%) to say they sympathized with neither side, while equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats (5%) said they sympathized with both sides equally.

The percentage of respondents who said they want the United States to stay the course in supporting Ukraine grew from our October 2023 poll, reaching the highest level in our tracking since the spring of 2023. In our latest survey, 48% of all respondents said that the United States should support Ukraine as long as the conflict lasts, including 37% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats. All these numbers are new highs in our four polls since March-April 2023.