Jacopo.bertolotti

The five qubits in IBM's quantum computer. (credit: IBM)

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, IBM gave an unwary world its first publicly accessible quantum computer. You might be worried that you can tear up your passwords and throw away your encryption, for all is now lost. However, it's probably a bit early to call time on the world as we know it. You see, the whole computer is just five bits.

This might sound like some kind of publicity stunt; maybe it's IBM's way of clawing some attention back from D-Wave's quantum computing efforts. But a careful look shows that serious science undergirds the announcement.

The IBM system is, on a very superficial level, similar to D-Wave's. Both systems use superconducting quantum interference devices as qubits (quantum bits). But the similarity ends there. As IBM emphasizes, its quantum computer is a universal quantum computer—which D-Wave's is not.

If you need this, you probably deserve this. (credit: ResetPlug)

It’s Monday night and you finally collapse into your favorite chair after a day that started at 5:00am. The dogs are crated, the kids are in bed, and your spouse has graciously agreed to do dinner clean-up. You lean your head back and sigh. There’s a whole week’s worth of worry stacked up in your forebrain, but for the next 20 minutes, none of it will matter. The tablet is warm in your hands as you tap the Netflix app, and you smile in anticipation of the one truly good thing that you’ll get to experience today. The theme song is already playing in your head: "Un—BREAKABLE! They’re alive, dammit! It’s a mir-a-cle!" For the next 20 minutes, you can escape.

…except you can’t, because instead of transporting you away from your worries, the stupid screen is showing a giant-ass error message: "Netflix is not available."

The vein in your forehead—you know the one, right at your hairline—starts throbbing. You can feel it. You know what comes next. You can already see it in your mind. You’re going to have to go upstairs into your youngest’s room—because for some incredibly insane reason the cable drop is in there, which makes you want to find the person who built the damn house and throttle them to death with six feet of coax—and you’re going to have to reach back under the kid’s bed, over the dust and the dog hair and the Lego bricks and broken Star Wars toys and whatever the hell else is under there and find the damn plug for the damn router. After you unplug and plug it back in, you’re going to have to lie there watching the damn lights on the stupid thing blink for minutes—whole minutes!—while your tiny window of Netflix time slowly trickles away.

The Jarbidge Mountains of Nevada, where the Chretiens got stranded. (credit: Chris M Morris)

One early morning in March 2011, Albert Chretien and his wife, Rita, loaded their Chevrolet Astro van and drove away from their home in Penticton, British Columbia. Their destination was Las Vegas, where Albert planned to attend a trade show. They crossed the border and, somewhere in northern Oregon, they picked up Interstate 84.

The straightest route would be to take I-84 to Twin Falls, Idaho, near the Nevada border, and then follow US Route 93 all the way to Vegas. Although US 93 would take them through Jackpot, Nevada, the town near the Idaho state line where they planned to spend the first night, they looked at a roadmap and decided to exit I-84 before that junction. They would choose a scenic road less traveled, Idaho State Highway 51, which heads due south away from the I-84 corridor, crossing the border several miles to the west. The Chretiens figured there had to be a turnoff from Idaho 51 that would lead them east to US 93.

Albert and Rita had known each other since high school. During their thirty-eight years of marriage, they had rarely been apart. They even worked together, managing their own small excavation business. A few days before the trip, Albert had purchased a Magellan GPS unit for the van. They had not yet asked it for directions, but their plan wasn’t panning out. As the day went on and the shadows grew longer, they were not finding an eastward passage. They decided it was time to consult the Magellan. Checking their roadmap, they determined the nearest town was Mountain City, Nevada, so they entered it as the destination into their GPS unit. The directions led them onto a small dirt road near an Idaho ghost town and eventually to a confusing three-way crossroads. They chose the one that seemed to point in the direction they wanted to go. And here their troubles began.

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Computer scientists have discovered vulnerabilities in Samsung's Smart Home automation system that allowed them to carry out a host of remote attacks, including digitally picking connected door locks from anywhere in the world.

The attack, one of several proof-of-concept exploits devised by researchers from the University of Michigan, worked against Samsung's SmartThings, one of the leading Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for connecting electronic locks, thermostats, ovens, and security systems in homes. The researchers said the attacks were made possible by two intrinsic design flaws in the SmartThings framework that aren't easily fixed. They went on to say that consumers should think twice before using the system to connect door locks and other security-critical components.

"All of the above attacks expose a household to significant harm—break-ins, theft, misinformation, and vandalism," the researchers wrote in a paper scheduled to be presented later this month at the 2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. "The attack vectors are not specific to a particular device and are broadly applicable."