As a devastating wildfire burned through a Maui town, killing more than 100 people, emergency management employees traded dozens of text messages, creating a record that would later help investigators piece together the government’s response to the 2023 tragedy. One text exchange hinted officials might also be using a second, untraceable messaging service. “That’s what…
Chinese researchers say they have developed a material that changes colour at a molecular level based on the surrounding light, creating a new form of camouflage that could help people blend into their environments – much like a chameleon. “In other words, applying this technology to clothing could make an individual effectively ‘invisible’,” said lead…
During this year’s election season in Mexico, propagandists leveraged a new mass-broadcasting feature on WhatsApp, called “channels,” to impersonate reputable political news outlets and pump out misleading information. Thousands of miles away, Telegram users in Hungary leveraged the app’s forwarding bot against LGBTQ+ and pro-democracy civil society organizations, portraying them as “Western-controlled” ahead of European…
Chinese researchers say they have become the first people to use a quantum computer to compromise the type of password-based security system widely employed in critical industries such as defense. Instead of using bits, which can only be 0 or 1, to make calculations like a traditional computer, quantum computers rely on quantum bits—or qubits—which…
Chinese scientists have mounted what they say is the world’s first effective attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer. The breakthrough poses a “real and substantial threat” to the long-standing password-protection mechanism employed across critical sectors, including banking and the military, according to the researchers. Despite the slow progress in general-purpose…