Security News > 2021

IBM announced bp has joined the IBM Quantum Network to advance the use of quantum computing in the energy industry. By joining the IBM Quantum Network as an Industry Partner, bp will have access to IBM's quantum expertise and software and cloud-based access to the most advanced quantum computers available via the cloud.

Japan and Cisco announced a collaboration framework through Cisco's Country Digital Acceleration Program to drive mass-scale digitization across Japan in support of its Society 5.0 vision and towards an inclusive recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic. The program in Japan was unveiled at virtual event attended by Guy Diedrich, Vice President and Global Innovation Officer at Cisco, and Ichiro Nakagawa, Vice President and Head of Japan at Cisco, Wayoh Suzuki, Chairman, Cisco Japan, with remarks via video from Takuya Hirai, Japan's Minister of State for Digital Transformation, the Minister of State for the Social Security and Tax Number System and Minister in charge of Information Technology Policy.

A project consortium which includes startups, industry, research centers, supercomputing centers and academia has come together to accelerate Europe's Quantum leadership efforts. IQM Quantum Computers will bring the members of this project consortium together and lead this project as a system integrator.

uCloudlink is accelerating its global expansion plans with the addition of new business partners in North America. uCloudlink has recently established a partnership with Cello in a move that sets the foundation for its future growth in the region.

As a total sucker for anything skimming-related, I was interested to hear from a reader working security for a retail chain in the United States who recently found Bluetooth-enabled skimming devices placed over top of payment card terminals at several stores. Interestingly, these skimmers interfered with the terminal's ability to read chip-based cards, forcing customers to swipe the stripe instead. Here's a closer look at the electronic gear jammed into these overlay skimmers.

Romance scams remain the most successful fraud strategy for cybercrooks, and represents a growing sector, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Romance scams have flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to a widening pool of targets, the FTC said.

The US Cyber Command has released a series of ten Valentine’s Day “Cryptography Challenge Puzzles.” Slashdot thread. Reddit thread. (And here’s the archived link, in case Cyber Command takes the...

The servers of British cryptocurrency exchange EXMO were taken offline temporarily after being targeted in a distributed denial-of-service attack. "We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack on our platform," the exchange said in a notification published earlier today.

Apple's upcoming iOS 14.5 update will come with a new feature that will redirect all fraudulent website checks through its own proxy servers as a workaround to preserve user privacy and prevent leaking IP addresses to Google. To achieve this, Apple relies on Google Safe Browsing - or Tencent Safe Browsing for users in Mainland China - a blocklist service that provides a list of URLs for web resources that contain malware or phishing content, to compare a hash prefix calculated from the website address and check if the website is fraudulent.

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