Information Technology

An error in a spreadsheet or Web page calculation sounds harmless enough, unless you’re the person whose retirement funds, credit history or medical treatment rely on decisions based on that calculation. A six-campus team of computer scientists led by Margaret Burnett at Oregon State University is working to help exterminate the bugs that infest the spreadsheets and other “programs” created by millions of computer users. You may not think of yourself as a programmer, but that’s jus

Computer security – or the apparent lack of it – is increasingly a worry for network administrators. But viruses and other such vulnerabilities are no mystery for Europe’s Computer Security Incident Response Teams, now also finding their feet in the European Union’s newest Member States.

Creating and managing Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) is just one of the topics at this year’s Computer Security Incident Handling Conference. Organised by FIRST (Forum of

The fastest known cryptographic system based on transmission of single photons—the smallest pulses of light—has been demonstrated by a team at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The transmissions cannot be intercepted without detection, so that messages encrypted with the system can be kept secret.

The NIST “quantum key distribution” (QKD) system transmits a stream of individual photons to generate a verifiably secret key–a random seri

A new breed of faster, more powerful computers based on quantum mechanics may be a step closer to reality, report scientists from Purdue and Duke universities.

By linking a pair of tiny “puddles” of a few dozen electrons sandwiched inside a semiconductor, researchers have enabled these two so-called “quantum dots” to become parts of a transistor – the vital switching component in computer chips. Future computers that use quantum dots to store and process digital information might outperform

Credit card fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes costing French banks over €41 million last year. The crime figures remain high despite progress already made and attempts by Interpol to fight fraud on a European scale.

Most of the cases of card fraud recorded last year involved stolen credit card numbers, which were used to buy goods or services either by phone or on the internet. Often fraud victims did not know their card had been used illegally until they received their monthly stat

W3C’s WS-CDL Targets Peer-to-Peer Web Services Collaboration

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued the Web Services Choreography Description Language Version 1.0 as a W3C First Public Working Draft. The Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is targeted to coordinate interactions among Web services and their users. This is the first in the series of WS-CDL drafts.

Choreography is the Key to Enterprise-Level Web Services

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