Slashdot Mirror
Domain: nist.gov
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nist.gov.
Stories · 192
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New SHA Functions Boost Crypto On 64-bit Chips
An anonymous reader writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology, guardian of America's cryptography standards, has announced a new extension to the SHA-2 hashing algorithm family that promises to boost performance on modern chips. Announced this week, two new standards — SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256 — have been created to directly replace the SHA-224 and SHA-256 standards. They take advantage of the speed improvements inherent in SHA-512 on 64-bit processors to produce checksums more rapidly than their predecessors — but truncate them at a shorter length, reducing the overall timespan and complexity of the digest." Further details are available from NIST (PDF). -
US Objects To the Kilogram
Velcroman1 writes "For 130 years, the kilogram has weighed precisely one kilogram. Hasn't it? The US government isn't so sure. The precise weight of the kilogram is based on a platinum-iridium cylinder manufactured 130 years ago; it's kept in a vault in France at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Forty of the units were manufactured at the time, to standardize the measure of weight. But due to material degradation and the effects of quantum physics, the weight of those blocks has changed over time. That's right, the kilogram no longer weighs 1 kilogram, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And it's time to move to a different standard anyway. A proposed revision would remove the final connection to that physical bit of matter, said Ambler Thompson, a NIST scientist involved in the international effort. 'We get rid of the last artifact.'" -
Smart Grid May Also Carry IPv6 Traffic
itwbennett writes "Kevin Fogarty is blogging about new specs outlined by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) that outline the requirements for 'any network designed to carry data instead of just electrons.' What's needed, in short, is 'a Common Information Model for the format of data in the network, interfaces to allow it to go from one device or substation to another, exchanges between control centers and communications protocols that will add security to the net.'" -
Scientists Confirm Nuclear Decay Rate Constancy
As_I_Please writes "Scientists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and Purdue University have ruled out neutrino flux as a cause of previously observed fluctuations in nuclear decay rates. From the article: 'Researchers ... tested this by comparing radioactive gold-198 in two shapes, spheres and thin foils, with the same mass and activity. Gold-198 releases neutrinos as it decays. The team reasoned that if neutrinos are affecting the decay rate, the atoms in the spheres should decay more slowly than the atoms in the foil because the neutrinos emitted by the atoms in the spheres would have a greater chance of interacting with their neighboring atoms. The maximum neutrino flux in the sample in their experiments was several times greater than the flux of neutrinos from the sun. The researchers followed the gamma-ray emission rate of each source for several weeks and found no difference between the decay rate of the spheres and the corresponding foils.' The paper can be found here on arXiv. Slashdot has previously covered the original announcement and followed up with the skepticism of other scientists." -
NIST Releases Updated Handbook of Math Functions
An anonymous reader writes "NIST announced the publishing of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions reference text (967 pp), also available in digital form at the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Access it with a MathML-enabled browser (Firefox or IE+plugin) to view equations as scalable text rather than bitmaps; the 3-D graphs can also be viewed with a VRML plugin for local rotating / zooming." The original Handbook of Mathematical Functions was published 46 years ago; the revision has been in the works for a decade. -
NIST Releases Updated Handbook of Math Functions
An anonymous reader writes "NIST announced the publishing of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions reference text (967 pp), also available in digital form at the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Access it with a MathML-enabled browser (Firefox or IE+plugin) to view equations as scalable text rather than bitmaps; the 3-D graphs can also be viewed with a VRML plugin for local rotating / zooming." The original Handbook of Mathematical Functions was published 46 years ago; the revision has been in the works for a decade. -
New Most Precise Clock Based On Aluminum Ion
eldavojohn writes "The National Institute for Standards and Technology has unveiled a new clock that will 'neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years,' making it an atomic clock twice as precise as the previous pacesetter, which was based on mercury atoms. Experts call it a 'milestone for atomic clocks.' The press release describes the workings: 'The logic clock is based on a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom) trapped by electric fields and vibrating at ultraviolet light frequencies, which are 100,000 times higher than microwave frequencies used in NIST-F1 and other similar time standards around the world.' This makes the aluminum ion clock a contender to replace the standard cesium fountain clock (within 1 second in about 100 million years) as NIST's standard. For those of you asking 'So what?' the article describes the important applications such a device holds: 'The extreme precision offered by optical clocks is already providing record measurements of possible changes in the fundamental "constants" of nature, a line of inquiry that has important implications for cosmology and tests of the laws of physics, such as Einstein's theories of special and general relativity. Next-generation clocks might lead to new types of gravity sensors for exploring underground natural resources and fundamental studies of the Earth. Other possible applications may include ultra-precise autonomous navigation, such as landing planes by GPS.'" -
New Most Precise Clock Based On Aluminum Ion
eldavojohn writes "The National Institute for Standards and Technology has unveiled a new clock that will 'neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years,' making it an atomic clock twice as precise as the previous pacesetter, which was based on mercury atoms. Experts call it a 'milestone for atomic clocks.' The press release describes the workings: 'The logic clock is based on a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom) trapped by electric fields and vibrating at ultraviolet light frequencies, which are 100,000 times higher than microwave frequencies used in NIST-F1 and other similar time standards around the world.' This makes the aluminum ion clock a contender to replace the standard cesium fountain clock (within 1 second in about 100 million years) as NIST's standard. For those of you asking 'So what?' the article describes the important applications such a device holds: 'The extreme precision offered by optical clocks is already providing record measurements of possible changes in the fundamental "constants" of nature, a line of inquiry that has important implications for cosmology and tests of the laws of physics, such as Einstein's theories of special and general relativity. Next-generation clocks might lead to new types of gravity sensors for exploring underground natural resources and fundamental studies of the Earth. Other possible applications may include ultra-precise autonomous navigation, such as landing planes by GPS.'" -
Copyright Status of Thermodynamic Properties?
orzetto writes "I work at a research institute, and programming models of physical systems is what I do most of the time. One significant problem when modeling physical processes is finding thermodynamic data. There are some commercial solutions, but these can be quite expensive, and to the best of my knowledge there are no open source efforts in this direction. In my previous job, my company used NIST's Supertrapp, which is not really that expensive, but is written in Fortran, and an old-fashioned dialect at that. As a result, it is a bit difficult to integrate into other projects (praised be f2c), and the programming interface is simply horrible; worse, there are some Fortran-induced limitations such as a maximum of 20 species in a mixture. I was wondering whether it would be legal to buy a copy of such a database (they usually sell with source code, no one can read Fortran anyway); take the data, possibly reformatting it as XML; implement a new programming interface from scratch; and publish the package as free software. Thermodynamic data is not an intellectual creation but a mere measurement, which was most likely done not by the programmers but by scientists funded with our tax money. What are your experiences and opinions on the matter? For the record, I am based in Germany, so the EU database directive applies." -
SHA-3 Second Round Candidates Released
Jeremy A. Hansen writes "NIST just announced their selections for algorithms going to the second round of the SHA-3 competition. Quoting: 'NIST received 64 SHA-3 candidate hash function submissions and accepted 51 first round candidates as meeting our minimum acceptance criteria. We have now selected 14 second round candidates to continue in the competition. Information about the second round candidate algorithms will be available here. We were pleased by the amount and quality of the cryptanalysis we received on the first round candidates, and more than a little amazed by the ingenuity of some of the attacks. ... In selecting this set of second round candidates we tried to include only algorithms that we thought had a chance of being selected as SHA-3. We were willing to extrapolate higher performance for conservative designs with apparently large safety factors, but comparatively unforgiving of aggressive designs that were broken, or nearly broken during the course of the review. We were more willing to accept disquieting properties of the hash function if the designer had apparently anticipated them, than if they were discovered during the review period, even if there were apparent fixes. We were generally alarmed by attacks on compression functions that seemed unanticipated by the submitters.'" -
SHA-3 Second Round Candidates Released
Jeremy A. Hansen writes "NIST just announced their selections for algorithms going to the second round of the SHA-3 competition. Quoting: 'NIST received 64 SHA-3 candidate hash function submissions and accepted 51 first round candidates as meeting our minimum acceptance criteria. We have now selected 14 second round candidates to continue in the competition. Information about the second round candidate algorithms will be available here. We were pleased by the amount and quality of the cryptanalysis we received on the first round candidates, and more than a little amazed by the ingenuity of some of the attacks. ... In selecting this set of second round candidates we tried to include only algorithms that we thought had a chance of being selected as SHA-3. We were willing to extrapolate higher performance for conservative designs with apparently large safety factors, but comparatively unforgiving of aggressive designs that were broken, or nearly broken during the course of the review. We were more willing to accept disquieting properties of the hash function if the designer had apparently anticipated them, than if they were discovered during the review period, even if there were apparent fixes. We were generally alarmed by attacks on compression functions that seemed unanticipated by the submitters.'" -
ICANN and NIST Announce Plans To Sign the DNS Root
jhutkd writes "On June 3rd, 2009, ICANN and NIST announced formal plans to use DNSSEC to sign the DNS root zone by the end of 2009. This is a huge step forward for the deployment of DNSSEC." -
Preparing To Migrate Off of SHA-1 In OpenPGP
jamie found a note on debian-administration.org, the first in a promised series on migrating off of SHA-1 in OpenPGP. "Last week at eurocrypt, a small group of researchers announced a fairly serious attack against the SHA-1 digest algorithm, which is used in many cryptosystems, including OpenPGP. The general consensus is that we should be 'moving in an orderly fashion toward the theater exits,' deprecating SHA-1 where possible with an eye toward abandoning it soon (one point of reference: US govt. federal agencies have been directed to cease all reliance on SHA-1 by the end of 2010, and this directive was issued before the latest results). ... So what can you do to help facilitate the move away from SHA-1? I'll outline three steps that current gpg users can do today, and then I'll walk through how to do each one..." -
Security Review Summary of NIST SHA-3 Round 1
FormOfActionBanana writes "The security firm Fortify Software has undertaken an automated code review of the NIST SHA-3 round 1 contestants (previously Slashdotted) reference implementations. After a followup audit, the team is now reporting summary results. According to the blog entry, 'This just emphasizes what we already knew about C, even the most careful, security conscious developer messes up memory management.' Of particular interest, Professor Ron Rivest's (the "R" in RSA) MD6 team has already corrected a buffer overflow pointed out by the Fortify review. Bruce Schneier's Skein, also previously Slashdotted, came through defect-free." -
NIST Announces Round 1 Candidates For SHA-3 Competition
jd writes "NIST has announced the round 1 candidates for the Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Challenge. Of the 64 who submitted entries, 51 were accepted. Of those, in mere days, one has been definitely broken, and three others are believed to have been. At this rate, it won't take the couple of years NIST was reckoning to whittle down the field to just one or two. (In comparison, the European Union version, NESSIE, received just one cryptographic hash function for its contest. One has to wonder if NIST and the crypto experts are so concerned about being overwhelmed with work for this current contest, why they all but ignored the European effort. A self-inflicted wound might hurt, but it's still self-inflicted.) Popular wisdom has it that no product will have any support for any of these algorithms for years — if ever. Of course, popular wisdom is ignoring all Open Source projects that support cryptography (including the Linux kernel) which could add support for any of these tomorrow. Does it really matter if the algorithm is found to be flawed later on, if most of these packages support algorithms known to be flawed today? Wouldn't it just be geekier to have passwords in Blue Midnight Wish or SANDstorm rather than boring old MD5, even if it makes no practical difference whatsoever?" -
NIST Announces Round 1 Candidates For SHA-3 Competition
jd writes "NIST has announced the round 1 candidates for the Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Challenge. Of the 64 who submitted entries, 51 were accepted. Of those, in mere days, one has been definitely broken, and three others are believed to have been. At this rate, it won't take the couple of years NIST was reckoning to whittle down the field to just one or two. (In comparison, the European Union version, NESSIE, received just one cryptographic hash function for its contest. One has to wonder if NIST and the crypto experts are so concerned about being overwhelmed with work for this current contest, why they all but ignored the European effort. A self-inflicted wound might hurt, but it's still self-inflicted.) Popular wisdom has it that no product will have any support for any of these algorithms for years — if ever. Of course, popular wisdom is ignoring all Open Source projects that support cryptography (including the Linux kernel) which could add support for any of these tomorrow. Does it really matter if the algorithm is found to be flawed later on, if most of these packages support algorithms known to be flawed today? Wouldn't it just be geekier to have passwords in Blue Midnight Wish or SANDstorm rather than boring old MD5, even if it makes no practical difference whatsoever?" -
Now From Bruce Schneier, the Skein Hash Function
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier and company have created a new hash function called Skein. From his blog entry: 'NIST is holding a competition to replace the SHA family of hash functions, which have been increasingly under attack. (I wrote about an early NIST hash workshop here.) Skein is our submission (myself and seven others: Niels Ferguson, Stefan Lucks, Doug Whiting, Mihir Bellare, Tadayoshi Kohno, Jon Callas, and Jesse Walker). Here's the paper." -
Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!
DeviceGuru writes "For the past few years, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has been sponsoring nanosoccer — a new team sport for universities with programs in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The soccer nanobots, operated by human players via remote-controlled magnetic fields and electrical signals, slide tiny discs around on a 30mm x 30mm playing field. Two demonstration competitions have already been held, and a third one is slated to take place next summer in Austria at RoboCup 2009." -
NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months." -
NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months." -
NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months." -
NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months." -
NIST Publishes Preview of Math Reference
An anonymous reader writes "Abramowitz & Stegun has been one of the most authoritative references for special functions and engineering mathematics since the 1960s, when it was published by the US Bureau of Standards (now NIST). NIST has been working on an freely-available online updated version to this legendary reference for years. A preview of the digital library of mathematical functions (which uses MathML and requires some of its fonts) is now available from NIST's website." -
U.S. Plan For "Thinking Machines" Repository
An anonymous reader writes "Information scientists organized by the US's NIST say they will create a "concept bank" that programmers can use to build thinking machines that reason about complex problems at the frontiers of knowledge — from advanced manufacturing to biomedicine. The agreement by ontologists — experts in word meanings and in using appropriate words to build actionable machine commands — outlines the critical functions of the Open Ontology Repository (OOR). More on the summit that produced the agreement here." -
White House Decides P2P Isn't All Bad?
ethericalzen writes "An article this week at Cnet revealed that the White House doesn't necessarily hate everything about P2P. The Bush Administration apparently has called into question a law, known as the Federal Agency Data Protection Act, that would force all federal agencies to have plans guarding against the risks of P2P file sharing. In a Congressional hearing on IT security threats, the LimeWire founder was questioned about how his service warned users about the files and folders they are sharing. Karen Evans, the chief information officer for the federal government, stated that she was against singling out a particular technology when issuing computer security requirements. As it is the government already has a law which requires federal agencies to report on information security plans and risk assessments known as FISMA." -
New NSA-Approved Encryption Standard May Contain Backdoor
Hugh Pickens writes "Bruce Schneier has a story on Wired about the new official standard for random-number generators the NIST released this year that will likely be followed by software and hardware developers around the world. There are four different approved techniques (pdf), called DRBGs, or 'Deterministic Random Bit Generators' based on existing cryptographic primitives. One is based on hash functions, one on HMAC, one on block ciphers and one on elliptic curves. The generator based on elliptic curves called Dual_EC_DRBG has been championed by the NSA and contains a weakness that can only be described as a backdoor. In a presentation at the CRYPTO 2007 conference (pdf) in August, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed that there are constants in the standard used to define the algorithm's elliptic curve that have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can completely break any instantiation of Dual_EC_DRBG." -
NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 180-2. This is in response to serious attacks reported in recent years against cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA-1, and because SHA-1 and the SHA-2 family share a similar design. Submissions are being accepted through October 2008, and the competition timeline indicates that a winner will be announced in 2012." -
NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 180-2. This is in response to serious attacks reported in recent years against cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA-1, and because SHA-1 and the SHA-2 family share a similar design. Submissions are being accepted through October 2008, and the competition timeline indicates that a winner will be announced in 2012." -
NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 180-2. This is in response to serious attacks reported in recent years against cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA-1, and because SHA-1 and the SHA-2 family share a similar design. Submissions are being accepted through October 2008, and the competition timeline indicates that a winner will be announced in 2012." -
First 'Quantum Computer Chips' Demonstrated
holy_calamity writes "The first quantum computer chips have been made by two US groups, New Scientist reports. Both NIST and Yale have demonstrated chips where information was transferred between two superconducting qubits using a 'quantum bus'. The bus is made from a cavity that traps a single microwave photon as a standing wave — the NIST group also managed to use the bus to store data from one qubit for a short time. 'After encoding information in one qubit, they transferred it into the cavity for 10 nanoseconds before transferring it to the other qubit. Yale's chip used qubits around 1-micron square built on silicon, while NIST used larger 10-square-micron qubits on top of sapphire. In both prototypes, the bus between the qubits was between five and seven millimeters long.'" -
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
InternetVoting writes "In a clear counter to the recent criticisms of secrecy involving Ciber labs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued recommendations (pdf) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). NIST recommends the accreditation of two labs, iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs. The recommendation, emphasizing the need for transparency, includes on-site assessment reports, lab responses, and on-site reviews for each lab. These reports shed much needed light into the process of voting machine certification. Learn more from the Q&As About NIST Evaluation of Laboratories that Test Voting Systems." -
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
InternetVoting writes "In a clear counter to the recent criticisms of secrecy involving Ciber labs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued recommendations (pdf) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). NIST recommends the accreditation of two labs, iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs. The recommendation, emphasizing the need for transparency, includes on-site assessment reports, lab responses, and on-site reviews for each lab. These reports shed much needed light into the process of voting machine certification. Learn more from the Q&As About NIST Evaluation of Laboratories that Test Voting Systems." -
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
InternetVoting writes "In a clear counter to the recent criticisms of secrecy involving Ciber labs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued recommendations (pdf) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). NIST recommends the accreditation of two labs, iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs. The recommendation, emphasizing the need for transparency, includes on-site assessment reports, lab responses, and on-site reviews for each lab. These reports shed much needed light into the process of voting machine certification. Learn more from the Q&As About NIST Evaluation of Laboratories that Test Voting Systems." -
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
InternetVoting writes "In a clear counter to the recent criticisms of secrecy involving Ciber labs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued recommendations (pdf) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). NIST recommends the accreditation of two labs, iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs. The recommendation, emphasizing the need for transparency, includes on-site assessment reports, lab responses, and on-site reviews for each lab. These reports shed much needed light into the process of voting machine certification. Learn more from the Q&As About NIST Evaluation of Laboratories that Test Voting Systems." -
NIST Condemns Paperless Electronic Voting
quizzicus writes "Paperless electronic voting machines 'cannot be made secure' [pdf] according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the most sweeping condemnation of voting machines issued by any federal agency, NIST echoes what critics have been saying all along, that due to the lack of verifiability, 'a single programmer could rig a major election.' Rather than adding printers, though, NIST endorses the hand-marked optical-scan system as the most reliable." -
NIST Condemns Paperless Electronic Voting
quizzicus writes "Paperless electronic voting machines 'cannot be made secure' [pdf] according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the most sweeping condemnation of voting machines issued by any federal agency, NIST echoes what critics have been saying all along, that due to the lack of verifiability, 'a single programmer could rig a major election.' Rather than adding printers, though, NIST endorses the hand-marked optical-scan system as the most reliable." -
Nanoknives To Be Used to Cut Cells
Roland Piquepaille writes "American researchers have built a carbon nanotube knife. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), this nanoknife will be used to cut and study cells. With this new tool, scientists and biologists will be able to make 3D images of cells and tissues for electron tomography, which requires samples less than 300 nanometers thick. And as cells are usually stored in wax for dissection, the researchers plan to test their nanoknives on a block of wax later this year. But read more for additional references and a picture of this nanoknife." -
Prepared for Next Year's Time Change?
wohlford puts forth this query: "Next year, daylight saving time will be extended another four weeks. Slashdot has covered the time change proposal and its estimated impact, already. Since then it has been signed into law. Looking around on the Net I don't see anyone taking this seriously. Will this become the next tech doomsday or just another joke like Y2K?" -
iPod More Popular Than Beer?
prostoalex writes "Whenever someone says college students, the first thing that comes to mind is drinking beer, right? Wrong, says new research by Student Monitor, which claims than in 2006 73% of students it surveyed said iPods were in, while beer drinking and Facebook.com fought for the second place with 71% of popular votes." -
NIST Standards for New Biometric ID Card Published
rts008 writes "eWEEK is reporting that NIST has published the biometric data specs on the new Federal ID cards for employees and contractors that will be issued in October. From the article: 'Specifically, the guidelines state that two fingerprints must be stored on the card as "minutia templates," mathematical representations of fingerprint images. [...] Guidelines require that all biometric data to be embedded in the CBEFF (Common Biometric Exchange Formats Framework) structure. This ensures that all biometric data will be digitally signed and uniformly encapsulated. This format will apply not only to PIV cards, but also to any other biometric records kept by federal government agencies.'" The published standards [PDF] are also available from the NIST web site. -
SELinux Moving Into The Mainstream
PaxTech writes "Security Enhanced Linux is moving into the mainstream rapidly, bringing its implementation of mandatory access control to a wider audience. The agenda for the 2006 SELinux Symposium has just been announced, distributions such as Fedora are including SELinux in the default build, and ports are underway to bring SELinux functionality to BSD and Darwin. Security minded systems administrators should be learning about this technology as it provides another strong layer of security for Linux servers." -
Gov't.-published List of Computer Security Holes
Arngautr writes "ScienceDaily.com reports that The U.S. government has created a 'comprehensive database of computer vulnerabilities,' The National Vulnerability Database. Updated daily, it currently includes almost 12,000 vulnerabilities. Should be a boon to IT professionals and script kiddies alike." -
Best Way to Back Up Photos and Video?
jsalbre writes "I do a lot of digital video work, and my wife is a professional photographer. With raw DV from the video camera using up 11GB/hr, and raw images from the digital SLR using 7MB I'm quickly using up a lot of space. I currently back up all my important files each night from one harddrive to another, but I now have over 200GB of irreplaceable data (more than just DV and photos, but those make up the largest chunk) and I'm having to exclude the "less important" irreplaceable files as my backups have started failing. Several people have suggested backing up vital unchanging files to DVD (video, images,) and continue backing up frequently accessed files to harddrive, but with recent studies showing that optical media doesn't last very long I don't want to come back in a few years and find that all my backups are useless. Not to mention that some of my DV files are larger than even a dual-layer DVD, and it would be near impossible to automate backup to DVD. How do other Slashdotters back up their important data? I'd appreciate distinction between methods for frequently accessed files and for infrequently accessed files. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated!" -
Atomic Clock Turns 50
karvind writes "BBC has an interesting story on the 50th birthday of atomic clocks. The first accurate caesium atomic clock was developed at the NPL in 1955 by Dr Louis Essen. And after 5 decades In September the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used computer chip fabrication techniques to make a small atomic clock. The final development should see a battery-operated system about the size of a sugar lump. NIST also has a page on history of atomic clocks" -
U.S. Government Issues Report on VoIP Security Holes
ranson writes "PC World is reporting on VoIP technology's threat of being manipulated by hackers, through call interception and DoS attacks on users' internet connections. While these threats are nothing new, the article cites an interesting government report on the topic, as well as its author, who believes a VoIP user's best protection is security by obscurity." -
The Baby Bootstrap?
An anonymous reader asks: "Slashdot recently covered a story that DARPA would significantly cut CS research. When I was completing graduate work in AI, the 'baby bootstrap' was considered the holy grail of military applications. Simply put, the 'baby bootstrap' would empower a computing device to learn like a child with a very good memory. DARPA poured a small fortune into the research. No sensors, servos or video input - it only needed terminal I/O to be effective. Today the internet could provide a developmental database far beyond any testbed that we imagined, yet there has been no significant progress in over 30 years. MindPixels and Cycorp seem typical of poorly funded efforts headed in the wrong direction, and all we hear from DARPA is autonomous robots. NIST seems more interested in industrial applications. Even Google is remarkably void of anything about the 'baby bootstrap'. What went wrong? Has the military really given up on this concept, or has their research moved to other, more classified levels?" -
Significant Advance in Quantum Computing
wcitech writes "Apparently scientists have been able to create circuitry that mimics the behavior of atom pairs by using superconductors." From the article: "The work, reported in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Science, demonstrates that it is possible to measure the quantum properties of two interconnected artificial atoms at virtually the same time. Until now, superconducting qubits--quantum counterparts of the 1s and 0s used in today's computers--have been measured one at a time to avoid unwanted effects on neighboring qubits." The second Quantum computing revelation this month, in fact. -
NIST Releases Study Of CD/DVD Longevity
dirkin writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a preliminary study of the potential lifespan of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. The PDF study is here. A good starting point for deciding what type of media to purchase to keep those backups and photos kicking around longer. (You DID buy the silver/gold alloy phthalocyanine CDs, didn't you?)" -
Single Government ID Moves Closer to Reality
NewbieV writes "The Washington Post is reporting that "federal officials are developing government-wide identification card standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent terrorists, criminals and other unauthorized people from getting into government buildings and computer systems." The project is known as the Personal Identity Verification Project, and is being managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)." -
Feds To Have Unified Biometric Federal ID System
An anonymous submitter writes "There have been rumors flying among the scientific community about a proposed standard for 'Personal Identity Verification' by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). According to the standard, all federal employees and contractors would require a 'PIV "card" that is "personalized" with data needed by the PIV system to later grant access to the subscriber to Federal facilities and information systems.' Besides the likely efficacy questions, concerns in the scientific community concern what impact this will have on our foreign collaborations (or even grad students)."