A $10 Million New York Lab Tries to Brute Force iOS Devices

Inside a lab in New York worth US$10 million, specialists are trying to brute force their way into iPhones and iPads.

What’s going on in the isolation room is important, if silent, forensic work. All of the phones are hooked up to two powerful computers that generate random numbers in an attempt to guess the passcode that locked each device. At night, technicians can enlist other computers in the office, harnessing their unused processing power to create a local supercomputer network.

‘Altered Carbon’ Season 2 Arrives on Netflix February 27

Good news for sci-fi fans: Altered Carbon season 2 arrives on Netflix February 27, 2020.

Season 2 of the sophisticated and compelling sci-fi drama finds Takeshi Kovacs (Anthony Mackie), the lone surviving soldier of a group of elite interstellar warriors, continuing his centuries-old quest to find his lost love Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry).

I enjoyed watching the show so I’m excited for season 2. It’s been so long since I’ve seen season 1 that I forgot For All Mankind’s Joel Kinnaman was in it.

Trade War Truce Means France Will Not Yet Apply Tariff on Apple And Other Tech Firms

The implementation of a French tax that would have affected Apple and other major tech firms is to be delayed. The 3 percent tariff will not be enforced whilst France and the U.S. continue trade talks, AppleInsider reported.

Originally proposed in December of 2018, the so-called GAFA – Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon – tax, had been given a stamp of approval by the French senate in July of 2019. The tax would have been applied retroactively. Under the measure, the 3% sales tax would be applied to sales generated in France by major multinational firms. France has pulled back on demanding the retroactive down payments temporarily, in an effort to prevent the U.S. from applying tariffs to French-made goods. “What we’re proposing is to give ourselves time and to show our goodwill, to postpone the remaining payments to December,” a French Finance Ministry source said, according to Reuters. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are due to negotiate the details in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the source added.

How to Protect Compromised Private Keys

Private keys are a crucial part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. However, in recent times, some of those have been compromised. Qredo CEO Anthony Foy shared his suggestions on how to protect them.

Bitcoin lets you be your own bank by holding your private keys, but as the cryptocurrency industry has developed, this idea has become diluted. Many cryptocurrency users now choose to surrender their private keys to third party custodians. This has brought trust back into a trustless system—with fatal effects. Cryptocurrency’s short history is littered with massive losses, where the private keys controlling millions have been stolen from exchange wallets, pilfered by scam artists, and embezzled by trusted custodians. Even those individuals who have stayed true to the spirit of Bitcoin and kept their own private keys have still suffered, with dodgy wallets, silly mistakes, and even a series of ‘horrible boating accidents’ all leading people to lose their cryptocurrency.