17225480
submission
Martin Hellman writes:
Yesterday, Slashdot reported that a system failure at Warren AFB in Wyoming affected 50 ICBM’s and that “various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline.” Assuaging fears that America’s nuclear deterrent might have been compromised during this failure, the source article notes that the missiles still could be launched from airborne command centers. Other reports cite an administration official offering assurances that "at no time did the president's ability [to launch] decrease." Given the difficulty of debugging software and hardware that is probably not a good thing. The history of nuclear command and control systems has too many examples of risky designs that favor the ability to launch over the danger of an accidental one.
17139776
submission
Martin Hellman writes:
Popular Mechanics has given one of its Breakthrough Awards for the invention of "programmable magnets." Instead of having a single North or South pole, these clever devices have an array of North and South poles. If a matching device with exactly the same array is aligned with the first one, they will experience strong repulsion, just like two single North poles do when brought near one another. If the matching device has the complementary array (North and South interchanged), with correct alignment the two devices will attract. But a slight misalignment will cancel most of the force. Apparently other configurations are possible as well, allowing frictionless magnetic gears and exploding toys. (The exploding toys video is near the bottom right of the second linked page.) The inventor, Larry Fullerton, used techniques similar to those from CDMA modulation. (Watch the Intro video on that same, second linked page for a brief explanation. While I don't understand magnetism that well, I do understand CDMA and carrying over those ideas to magnetic arrays does make sense to me.)
17135410
submission
Martin Hellman writes:
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, has dropped a nuclear bombshell, metaphorically speaking. Shelton’s recently released memoirs "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior," assert that President Clinton lost a card containing key phrases needed for ordering a nuclear strike, and that the codes were missing for months. This confirms a similar allegation, made in 2004 by Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, a military aide who frequently carried the “nuclear football” during the Clinton presidency. Unfortunately, human error within the nuclear weapons complex is a frequent and dangerous occurrence.
15692622
submission
Martin Hellman writes:
According to an article in Nature magazine, Quantum hackers have performed the first 'invisible' attack on two commercial quantum cryptographic systems. By using lasers on the systems — which use quantum states of light to encrypt information for transmission —" they have fully cracked their encryption keys, yet left no trace of the hack."
