BT is claiming bragging rights after completing trials of hollow-core fibre (HCF) cable at its labs at Adastral Park in Suffolk, England.

The new cable – Nested Anti-Resonant Nodeless hollow-core fibre (NANF) to give it its full name – was developed and manufactured by Lumenisity, a Hampshire business set up in 2017 and spun out from work originating at Southampton University. The trials were set up in conjunction with American OpenRAN vendor Mavenir.

Unlike traditional fibre-optic cable, which is made from a solid piece of glass and sends signals using different wavelengths of light to transmit data, Lumenisity's CoreSmart cable is hollow to reduce latency and interference.

BT claims this is yet another small step towards the development of quantum-secure communications after it revealed that researchers had "successfully operated" an "ultra-secure" Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) over a 6km HCF cable.

This is 4km shorter than the 10km proposed in June. When we asked BT about the discrepancy, it told us:

"The sample we received from Lumenisity had been divided into a 6km and 4km length of cable. We tested the QKD system over both the 4km and 6km pieces."

It was also the case that this particular sample of HCF had higher loss than standard single mode fibre. However, University of Southampton have demonstrated that they can also build very low loss Hollow Core Fibre samples, and we do not expect these two beneficial properties (low loss and low scattering) to be mutually exclusive.

BT said of the trials: "Because we placed such a high power channel spectrally close to a very low 'single photon' channel, it was necessary to use extra demultiplexing filter stages, otherwise the effect of filter leakage would have made it impossible to show that the rates of inter-wavelength scattering were indeed insignificant within the HCF.

"The extra filters added to the loss of the link and used up some of the loss budget (i.e. the maximum loss that would provide good performance for the particular QKD system we were trialling)."

The trials, reported by El Reg earlier this year, used the Lumenisity cable as part of broader research to address the need for high-speed transactions and bandwidth increases that could be developed for applications such as Data Centre Interconnects (DCIs), Edge, and 5G xHaul.

In a statement, Professor Andrew Lord, BT's Head of Optical Network Research, said the trial will play an "important role in future communications systems globally."

"We've proven a range of benefits that can be realised by deploying hollow-core fibre for quantum-secure communication," he added. "Hollow-core fibre's low latency and ability to send QKD over a single fibre with other signals is a critical advancement for the future of secure communications."

The issue of QKD technology has started to generate an increasing number of headlines as people try to figure out whether QKD really can live up to its "unhackable, uncrackable or unbreakable" label. Earlier this month, news website IT World Canada reported that Ottawa-based security outfit Quantropi had successfully tested its QKD technology over long distances on the internet ahead of a commercial product launch later this year.

Around the time BT and Lumenisity started their trials, Space.com reported that UK-based startup Arqit was two years away from using satellites to roll out QKD technology.

Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight, reckoned today's announcement represents a "key step in identifying new technologies that will form the foundation of next-generation networks."

Touching on the broader implications for such developments – particularly when it comes to protecting your assets – he told us: "No company is immune to scrutiny which should be enforced to ensure security and privacy is maintained. Ultimately, security is paramount in a world where networks are becoming software-driven and prone to attacks." ®

Science fiction is littered with fantastic visions of computing. One of the more pervasive is the idea that one day computers will run on light. After all, what’s faster than the speed of light?

But it turns out Star Trek’s glowing circuit boards might be closer to reality than you think, Ayar Labs CTO Mark Wade tells The Register. While fiber optic communications have been around for half a century, we’ve only recently started applying the technology at the board level. Despite this, Wade expects, within the next decade, optical waveguides will begin supplanting the copper traces on PCBs as shipments of optical I/O products take off.

Driving this transition are a number of factors and emerging technologies that demand ever-higher bandwidths across longer distances without sacrificing on latency or power.

QNAP is warning users about another wave of DeadBolt ransomware attacks against its network-attached storage (NAS) devices – and urged customers to update their devices' QTS or QuTS hero operating systems to the latest versions.

The latest outbreak – detailed in a Friday advisory – is at least the fourth campaign by the DeadBolt gang against the vendor's users this year. According to QNAP officials, this particular run is encrypting files on NAS devices running outdated versions of Linux-based QTS 4.x, which presumably have some sort of exploitable weakness.

The previous attacks occurred in January, March, and May.

A US task force aims to prevent online harassment and abuse, with a specific focus on protecting women, girls and LGBTQI+ individuals.

In the next 180 days, the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse will, among other things, draft a blueprint on a "whole-of-government approach" to stopping "technology-facilitated, gender-based violence." 

A year after submitting the blueprint, the group will provide additional recommendations that federal and state agencies, service providers, technology companies, schools and other organisations should take to prevent online harassment, which VP Kamala Harris noted often spills over into physical violence, including self-harm and suicide for victims of cyberstalking as well mass shootings.

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Inverse Finance has been robbed of cryptocurrency somehow exchangeable for $1.2 million, just two months after being taken for $15.6 million.

"Inverse Finance’s Frontier money market was subject to an oracle price manipulation incident that resulted in a net loss of $5.83 million in DOLA with the attacker earning a total of $1.2 million," the organization said on Thursday in a post attributed to its Head of Growth "Patb."

And Inverse Finance would like its funds back. Enumerating the steps the DAO intends to take in response to the incident, Patb said, "First, we encourage the person(s) behind this incident to return the funds to the Inverse Finance DAO in return for a generous bounty."

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel today signed an order approving the extradition of Julian Assange to America, where he faces espionage charges for sharing secret government documents.

Assange led WikiLeaks, a website that released classified files including footage of US airstrikes and military documents from the Iraq and Afghanistan war that detailed civilian casualties.

It also distributed secret files revealing the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and sensitive communications from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, during the 2016 US presidential election. 

A group of senators wants to make it illegal for data brokers to sell sensitive location and health information of individuals' medical treatment.

A bill filed this week by five senators, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), comes in anticipation the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling that could overturn the 49-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing access to abortion for women in the US.

The worry is that if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade – as is anticipated following the leak in May of a majority draft ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito – such sensitive data can be used against women.

A Russian operated botnet known as RSOCKS has been shut down by the US Department of Justice acting with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It is believed to have compromised millions of computers and other devices around the globe.

The RSOCKS botnet functioned as an IP proxy service, but instead of offering legitimate IP addresses leased from internet service providers, it was providing criminals with access to the IP addresses of devices that had been compromised by malware, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of California.

It seems that RSOCKS initially targeted a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as industrial control systems, routers, audio/video streaming devices and various internet connected appliances, before expanding into other endpoints such as Android devices and computer systems.

Interview 2023 is shaping up to become a big year for Arm-based server chips, and a significant part of this drive will come from Nvidia, which appears steadfast in its belief in the future of Arm, even if it can't own the company.

Several system vendors are expected to push out servers next year that will use Nvidia's new Arm-based chips. These consist of the Grace Superchip, which combines two of Nvidia's Grace CPUs, and the Grace-Hopper Superchip, which brings together one Grace CPU with one Hopper GPU.

The vendors lining up servers include American companies like Dell Technologies, HPE and Supermicro, as well Lenovo in Hong Kong, Inspur in China, plus ASUS, Foxconn, Gigabyte, and Wiwynn in Taiwan are also on board. The servers will target application areas where high performance is key: AI training and inference, high-performance computing, digital twins, and cloud gaming and graphics.

The US could implement a law similar to the EU's universal charger mandate if a trio of Senate Democrats get their way.

In a letter [PDF] to Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, two of Massachusetts' senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, along with Bernie Sanders (I-VT), say a proliferation of charging standards has created a messy situation for consumers, as well as being an environmental risk. 

"As specialized chargers become obsolete … or as consumers change the brand of phone or device that they use, their outdated chargers are usually just thrown away," the senators wrote. The three cite statistics from the European Commission, which reported in 2021 that discarded and unused chargers create more than 11,000 tons of e-waste annually.

Microsoft is extending the Defender brand with a version aimed at families and individuals.

"Defender" has been the company's name of choice for its anti-malware platform for years. Microsoft Defender for individuals, available for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers, is a cross-platform application, encompassing macOS, iOS, and Android devices and extending "the protection already built into Windows Security beyond your PC."

The system comprises a dashboard showing the status of linked devices as well as alerts and suggestions.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC has revealed details of its much anticipated 2nm production process node – set to arrive in 2025 – which will use a nanosheet transistor architecture, as well as enhancements to its 3nm technology.

The newer generations of silicon semiconductor chips are expected to bring about increases in speed and will be more energy efficient as process nodes shrink and the tech industry continues to fight to hang onto Moore's Law.

The company is due to go into production with the 3nm node in the second half of this year.

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