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Category: internet

A fiber optic cable spied on Greenland’s glaciers. It found an alarming problem

One of the buzziest technologies in modern science may be running right under your feet. Fiber optic cables bring you the internet as data-rich pulses of light, but they also detect signals from the surrounding environment: Researchers can analyze the light that’s scattered when a volcanic eruption or tsunami jostles the wiring. Known as distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, the technique is so sensitive that it can track your footsteps as you walk over a cable, and may one day even warn you of an impending earthquake.

Now, researchers have laid a fiber optic cable on the seafloor near a glacier in Greenland, revealing in unprecedented detail what happens during a calving event, when chunks of ice drop into the ocean. That, in turn, could help solve a long-standing conundrum and better understand the hidden processes driving the rapid deterioration of the island’s ice sheet, which would add 23 feet to sea levels if it disappeared.

Even before humans started changing the climate, Greenland’s glaciers were calving naturally. The island is covered in glaciers that slowly flow toward the ocean, breaking into icebergs that float out to sea. When temperatures were lower, the ice sheet was also readily regenerating as snow fell.

GhostRedirector Hacks 65 Windows Servers Using Rungan Backdoor and Gamshen IIS Module

Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the lid on a previously undocumented threat cluster dubbed GhostRedirector that has managed to compromise at least 65 Windows servers primarily located in Brazil, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The attacks, per Slovak cybersecurity company ESET, led to the deployment of a passive C++ backdoor called Rungan and a native Internet Information Services (IIS) module codenamed Gamshen. The threat actor is believed to be active since at least August 2024.

“While Rungan has the capability of executing commands on a compromised server, the purpose of Gamshen is to provide SEO fraud as-a-service, i.e., to manipulate search engine results, boosting the page ranking of a configured target website,” ESET researcher Fernando Tavella said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

Scientists create scalable quantum node linking light and matter

Quantum scientists in Innsbruck have taken a major leap toward building the internet of the future. Using a string of calcium ions and finely tuned lasers, they created quantum nodes capable of generating streams of entangled photons with 92% fidelity. This scalable setup could one day link quantum computers across continents, enable unbreakable communication, and even transform timekeeping by powering a global network of optical atomic clocks that are so precise they’d barely lose a second over the universe’s entire lifetime.

Novel hollow-core optical fiber transmits data 45% faster with record low loss

Despite the modern world relying heavily on digital optical communication, there has not been a significant improvement in the minimum attenuation—a measure of the loss of optical power per kilometer traveled—of optical fibers in around 40 years. Decreasing this loss would mean that the signal could travel further without being amplified, leading to more data being transmitted over longer distances, faster internet and more efficient networks.

Current fibers transmit light through silica cores, which have limited room for loss improvement. Another option is the hollow-core fiber (HCF), which theoretically allows for faster speeds due to the ability of light to travel faster through air than through silica. Still, scientists struggled to design HCFs that actually performed better than silica-based cables. In most cases, the attenuation was worse or the design was impractical.

But now, researchers from the University of Southampton and Microsoft claim to have made a breakthrough in HCF design in a recently published study in Nature Photonics. The new fiber achieves a record low loss of 0.091 dB/km at 1,550 nm, compared to a 0.14 dB/km minimum loss for silica-based fibers. The new design maintains low losses of around 0.2 dB/km over a 66 THz bandwidth and boasts 45% faster transmission speeds.

Scientists develop the world’s first 6G chip, capable of 100 Gbps speeds

Sixth generation, or 6G, wireless technology is one step closer to reality with news that Chinese researchers have unveiled the world’s first “all-frequency” 6G chip. The chip is capable of delivering mobile internet speeds exceeding 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) and was developed by a team led by scientists from Peking University and the City University of Hong Kong.

6G technology is the successor to 5G and promises to bring about a massive leap in how we communicate. It will offer benefits such as ultra-high-speed connectivity, ultra-low latency and AI integration that can manage and optimize networks in real-time. To achieve this, 6G networks will need to operate across a range of frequencies, from standard microwaves to much higher terahertz waves. Current 5G technology utilizes a limited set of radio frequencies, similar to those used in previous generations of wireless technologies.

The new is no bigger than a thumbnail, measuring 11 millimeters by 1.7 millimeters. It operates across a wide frequency range, from 0.5 GHz to 115 GHz, which traditionally takes nine separate radio systems to cover this spectrum.

Over 16,000 compromised servers uncovered using Secure Shell key probing method

An international research team from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has developed a method to detect compromised hosts at an internet scale by probing servers with public SSH keys previously observed in attacker operations.

This way, the team was able to identify more than 16,000 compromised hosts. Their findings have now been published at the USENIX Security Symposium 2025, where they were awarded a Distinguished Paper Award and the Internet Defense Prize.

Secure Shell (SSH) is one of the most common tools used to manage remotely. It provides a secure, encrypted channel between a client and a server, allowing users to log in, execute commands, and transfer files safely. SSH is widely used by system administrators and developers for maintaining and configuring remote systems.

Starship IFT-10 & Starlink

SpaceX’s successful Starship IFT-10 test and advancements in Starlink technology are poised to significantly reduce launch costs and disrupt the broadband landscape, paving the way for a more efficient and cost-effective space travel and satellite internet service.

## Questions to inspire discussion.

Starship and Starlink Advancements.

🚀 Q: How does Starship improve Starlink satellite deployment? A: Starship enables deployment of V3 Starlink satellites that are 40-50X cheaper per unit bandwidth compared to Falcon 9, according to Mach33 research.

📡 Q: What advantages do larger satellites on Starship offer? A: Starship’s size allows for larger satellites delivering more bandwidth per mass, improving physics scaling laws and making it 50X more efficient than Falcon 9 for launching bandwidth per kilogram.

Cost and Capacity Improvements.

Continue reading “Starship IFT-10 & Starlink” | >

Quantum internet is possible using standard Internet protocol — University engineers send quantum signals over fiber lines without losing entanglement

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have successfully sent quantum signals over a standard internet connection with fiber-optic cables in the real world. The researchers have published their work in Science, taking the quantum internet from theory to reality by using existing internet systems.

Quantum signals are famously weak, unable to be measured without losing their quantum entanglement and becoming unreadable with too much noise. But engineers have managed to send the signals over the same busy internet infrastructure that standard IP signals occupy.

Engineers send quantum signals with standard Internet Protocol

In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today’s web.

Reported in Science, the work shows that fragile quantum signals can run on the same infrastructure that carries everyday online traffic. The team tested their approach on Verizon’s campus fiber-optic network.

The Penn team’s tiny “Q-chip” coordinates quantum and classical data and, crucially, speaks the same language as the modern web. That approach could pave the way for a future “quantum internet,” which scientists believe may one day be as transformative as the dawn of the online era.

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