Category Archives: Quantum Computing

We live in a world characterised by inequality, poverty, economic volatility, globalisation, climate change and ambiguity. In my own country, South Africa, residents have to navigate socioeconomic and political instability, power and water cuts, homelessness, unethical governance and mediocre or no service delivery.

It is a far cry from what the country could be if we brought its best talent and resources to bear for the benefit of humanity.

Innovation will be key to any positive changes and research-intensive universities have a central to play in that innovation. As the University of the Witwatersrand (or Wits, as its commonly known) turns 100, my colleagues and I have been thinking a great deal about the inventions and breakthroughs that have emerged from the university in the past 100 years and what is coming next.

Great innovations have emerged from the work done by Wits researchers that have shifted the dial in sectors ranging from health to computing to quantum and nuclear physics. These rich seams of knowledge continue to inform policy and daily decisions and are the foundation of cutting edge research the institution continues to produce.

On 1 September 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. World War 2 was underway. Barely three months later, the first radar set was tested on Wits Universitys campus. Britain and its allies were looking for a way to detect enemy aircraft and ships. A group of scientists among them Sir Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research and another Wits engineer, Professor Guerino Bozzoli came together to harness the power of radio waves.

Almost a century on, the science of sensors has taken several quantum leaps. Professor Andrew Forbes and his team at Wits are encrypting, transmitting, and decoding data quickly and securely through light beams. He has just secured R54 million for the Wits Quantum Initiative which explores theoretical and experimental quantum science and engineering, secure communications, enhanced quantum-inspired imaging, novel nano and quantum-based sensors and devices.

The university has also come a long way on its computing journey. In 1960 it was the first university in South Africa to own an IBM mainframe computer. Today, in partnership with IBM, were the first African university to access a quantum computer.

Read more: New research proves the long-held theory that lasers can create fractals

As the Chair of the National Quantum Computing Working Group in South Africa, this is an area where I see immense potential for Africa. Classical computing has served society incredibly well. It gave us the Internet and cashless commerce. It sent humans to the moon, put robots on Mars and smartphones in our pockets.

But many of the worlds biggest mysteries and potentially greatest opportunities remain beyond the grasp of classical computers. To continue the pace of progress, we need to augment the classical approach with a completely new paradigm, one that follows its own set of rules - quantum computing.

This radically new way of performing computer calculations is exponentially faster than any classical computer. It can run new algorithms to solve previously unsolvable problems in optimisation, chemistry and machine learning, and its applications are far-reaching from physics to healthcare.

Innovative healthcare is sorely needed across the African continent. Here, too, Wits has been able to play a vital role in the research, teaching and learning, clinical, social and advocacy spheres. It was the first university to lead COVID-19 vaccination trials in South Africa.

Our researchers also developed technology to improve the accurate testing for tuberculosis. And the Pelebox, an invention to cut down the time that patients spend waiting for medication in hospitals.

Elsewhere in the institution, researchers have connected the brain to the internet, used brainwaves to control a robotic prosthetic hand and developed an affordable 3D printed bionic hand.

Research intensive universities in South Africa need to ask the difficult questions about their role in a changing society.

How do we serve as a catalyst for social change? How do we best use our intellectual dynamism and work with the public and private sectors to effect positive change? How do we create new, relevant knowledge and translate it into innovation? How do we best develop critical thinkers, innovators, creators and the high-level skills required to advance our economy, and the future world of work?

How do we quantify our social impact and ensure that it is contextually attuned? How do we influence policy change?

These questions are at the heart of the universitys strategy today. And theyre no doubt being considered across the higher education sector as universities work to harness their collective talent and the resources at their disposal to craft a new future and transform society for the benefit of all humanity.

Read more:
100 years of innovation and inventions: South African vice chancellor reflects on what's next - The Conversation

PsiQuantum

In 2009, Jeremy O'Brien, a professor at the University of Bristol, published a research paper describing how to repurpose on-chip optical components originally developed by the telecom industry to manipulate single particles of light and perform quantum operations.

By 2016, based on the earlier photonic research, OBrien and three of his academic colleagues, Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson, and Pete Shadbolt, created PsiQuantum.

The founders all believed that the traditional method of building a quantum computer of a useful size would take too long. At the companys inception, the PsiQuantum team established its goal to build a million qubit, fault-tolerant photonic quantum computer. They also believed the only way to create such a machine was to manufacture it in a semiconductor foundry.

Early alerts

PsiQuantum first popped up on my quantum radar about two years ago when it received $150 million in Series C funding which upped total investments in the company to $215 million.

That level of funding meant there was serious interest in the potential of whatever quantum device PsiQuantum was building. At that time, PsiQuantum was operating in a stealth mode, so there was little information available about its research.

Finally, after receiving another $450 million in Series D funding last year, PsiQuantum disclosed additional information about its technology. As recently as few weeks ago, a small $25 million US government grant was awarded jointly to PsiQuantum and its fabrication partner, GlobalFoundries, for tooling and further development of its photonic quantum computer. Having GlobalFoundries as a partner was a definite quality signal. GF is a high-quality, premiere fab and only one of the three tier one foundries worldwide.

With a current valuation of $3.15 Billion, PsiQuantum is following a quantum roadmap mainly paved with stepping stones of its own design with unique technology, components, and processes needed to build a million-qubit general-purpose silicon photonic quantum computer.

Technology

Classical computers encode information using digital bits to represent a zero or a one. Quantum computers use quantum bits (qubits), which can also represent a one or a zero, or be in a quantum superposition of some number between zero and one at the same time. There are a variety of qubit technologies. IBM, Google, and Rigetti use qubits made with small loops of wire that become superconductors when subjected to very cold temperatures. Quantinuum and IonQ use qubits formed by removing an outer valence electron from an atom of Ytterbium to create an ion. Atom Computing makes neutral atom spin qubits using an isotope of Strontium.

Light is used for various operations in superconductors and atomic quantum computers. PsiQuantum also uses light and turns infinitesimally small photons of light into qubits. Of the two types of photonic qubits - squeezed light and single photons - PsiQuantums technology of choice is single-photon qubits.

Using photons as qubits is a complex process. It is complicated to determine the quantum state of a single photon among trillions of photons with a range of varied frequencies and energies.

Dr. Pete Shadbolt is the Co-founder and Chief Science Officer of PsiQuantum. His responsibilities include overseeing the application and implementation of technology and scientific-related policies and procedures that are vital to the success of PsiQuantum. After earning his PhD in experimental photonic quantum computing from the University of Bristol in 2014, he was a postdoc at Imperial College researching the theory of photonic quantum computing. While at Bristol, he demonstrated the first-ever Variational Quantum Eigensolver and the first-ever public API to a quantum processor. He has been awarded the 2014 EPSRC "Rising Star" by the British Research Council; the EPSRC Recognizing Inspirational Scientists and Engineers Award; and the European Physics Society Thesis Prize.

Dr. Shadbolt explained that detecting a single photon from a light beam is analogous to collecting a single specified drop of water from the Amazon river's volume at its widest point.

That process is occurring on a chip the size of a quarter, Dr. Shadbolt said. Extraordinary engineering and physics are happening inside PsiQuantum chips. We are constantly improving the chips fidelity and single photon source performance.

Just any photon isnt good enough. There are stringent requirements for photons used as qubits. Consistency and fidelity are critical to the performance of photonic quantum computers. Therefore, each photon source must have high purity, proper brightness, and generate consistently identical photons.

The right partner

GlobalFoundries facility in Essex, Vermont

When PsiQuantum announced its Series D funding a year ago, the company revealed it had formed a previously undisclosed partnership with GlobalFoundries. Out of public view, the partnership had been able to build a first-of-its-kind manufacturing process for photonic quantum chips. This manufacturing process produces 300-millimeter wafers containing thousands of single photon sources, and a corresponding number of single photon detectors. The wafer also contains interferometers, splitters, and phase shifters. In order to control the photonic chip, advanced electronic CMOS control chips with around 750 million transistors were also built at the GlobalFoundries facility in Dresden, Germany.

Photon advantages

Every quantum qubit technology has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. PsiQuantum chose to use photons to build its quantum computer for several reasons:

Another major advantage of photon qubits worth highlighting is the ability to maintain quantum states for a relatively long time. As an example of lights coherence, despite traveling for billions of years, light emitted by distant stars and galaxies reaches earth with its original polarization intact. The longer a qubit can maintain its polarized quantum state, the more quantum operations it can perform, which makes the quantum computer more powerful.

Why start with a million qubits?

We believed we had cracked the code for building a million-qubit quantum computer, Dr. Shadbolt said. Even though that's a huge number, the secret seemed simple. All we had to do was use the same process as the one being used to put billions of transistors into cell phones. We felt a large quantum computer wouldnt exist in our lifetime unless we figured out how to build it in a semiconductor foundry. That idea has been turned into reality. We are now building quantum chips next to laptops and cell phone chips on the GlobalFoundries 300-millimeter platform.

According to Dr. Shadbolt, PsiQuantums custom fabrication line has made much progress. Surprisingly, building a million-qubit quantum machine in a foundry has many of the same non-quantum issues as assembling a classical supercomputer, including chip yields, reliability, high-throughput testing, packaging, and cooling albeit to cryogenic temperatures.

From the time that our first GlobalFoundries announcement was made until now, we've produced huge amounts of silicon, Dr. Shadbolt said. Weve done seven tapeouts in total and were now seeing hundreds and hundreds of wafers of silicon coming through our door. We are investing heavily in packaging, assembly systems, integration, and fiber attachment to ensure the highest efficiency of light flowing in and out of the chip.

PsiQuantum is performing a great deal of ongoing research as well as continually improving the performance of photonic components and processes. In addition to high-performance optical components, the technologies that enable the process are also very important. A few enablers include optical switches, fiber-to-chip interconnects, and bonding methods.

We have greatly improved the efficiency of our photon detectors over the last few tapeouts at GlobalFoundries, Dr. Shadbolt explained. Were constantly working to prevent fewer and fewer photons from being lost from the system. We also have driven waveguide losses to extremely low levels in our recent chips.

There is much innovation involved. Our light source for single photons is a good example. We shine laser light directly into the chip to run the single photon sources. The laser is about a trillion times more intense than the single photons we need to detect, so we must attenuate light on that chip by a factor of about a trillion.

Dr. Shadbolt attributes PsiQuantums manufacturing success to GlobalFoundries. From experience, he knows there is a significant difference between a second-tier foundry and a first-tier foundry like GlobalFoundries. Building chips needed by PsiQuantum can only be built with an extremely mature manufacturing process.

PsiQuantum has two demanding requirements. We need a huge number of components, and we need those components to consistently meet extremely demanding performance requirements. There are very few partners in the world who can reliably achieve something like this, and we always knew that partnering with a mature manufacturer like GlobalFoundries would be key to our strategy.

The partnership has also been beneficial for GlobalFoundries because it has gained additional experience with new technologies by adding PsiQuantums photonic processes to the foundry.

The end is in sight

According to Dr. Shadbolt, the original question of whether large numbers of quantum devices could be built in a foundry is no longer an issue as routinely demonstrated by its output of silicon. However, inserting new devices into the manufacturing flow has always been difficult. It is slow and it is very expensive. Nanowire single photon detectors are an example of a development that came directly from the university lab and was inserted into the manufacturing process.

PsiQuantums semiconductor roadmap only has a few remaining items to complete. Since a million qubits wont fit on a single chip, the quantum computer will require multiple quantum processor chips to be interconnected with optical fibers and facilitated by ultra-high-performance optical switches to allow teleportation and entanglement of single photon operations between chips.

What remains is the optical switch, Dr. Shadbolt said. You might ask why photonic quantum computing people have never built anything at scale? Or why they havent demonstrated very large entangled states? The reason is that a special optical switch is needed, but none exists. It must have very high performance, better than any existing state-of-the-art optical switch such as those used for telecom networking. Its a classical device, and its only function will be to route light between waveguides, but it must be done with extremely low loss and at very high speed. It must be a really, really good optical switch.

If it cant be bought, then it must be built

Implementing an optical switch with the right specs is a success-or-fail item for PsiQuantum. Since a commercial optical switch doesnt exist that fits the application needs, PsiQuantum was left with no choice but to build one. For the past few years, its management has been heavily investing in developing a very high-performance optical switch.

Dr. Shadbolt explained: I believe this is one of the most exciting things PsiQuantum is doing. Building an extremely high-performance optical switch is the next biggest thing on our roadmap. We believe it is the key to unlocking the huge promise of optical quantum computing.

Summary

PsiQuantum was founded on the belief that photonics was the right technology for building a fault tolerant quantum machine with a million qubits and that the proper approach was based on semiconductor manufacturing. In contrast to NISQ quantum computers, the founders wanted to avoid building incrementally larger and larger machines over time.

Considering the overall process needed to build a million-qubit quantum computer, its high degree of complexity, and the lack of proven tools and processes to do it with, PsiQuantum has made amazing progress since it first formed the company.

It established a true partnership with one of the best foundries in the world and produced seven tapeouts and funded a half dozen new tools to build a first-of-its-kind wafer manufacturing process, incorporating superconducting single photon detectors into a regular silicon-photonic chip.

And today, it is answering yet another challenge by building an optical switch to fill a void where the needed product doesnt exist.

It is no surprise that an ultra- high-performance optical switch is a key part of PsiQuantums plans to build a scalable million qubit quantum computer. Other quantum companies are also planning to integrate similar optical switching technology to scale modular QPU architectures within the decade. The high-performance optical switch PsiQuantum is developing could someday connect tens of thousands of quantum processing units in a future multi-million qubit quantum data center. As a standalone product, it could also be a source of additional revenue should PsiQuantum choose to market it.

Once the optical switch has been built, it will then need to be enabled into GlobalFoundries manufacturing flow. That is the last step needed to complete PsiQuantums foundry assembly process and then it will be ready to produce photonic quantum computer chips.

But even with a complete end-to-end manufacturing process, significantly more time will be needed to construct a full-blown fault-tolerant quantum computer. It will remain for PsiQuantum to build complete quantum computers around chips produced by GlobalFoundries. For that, it will need a trained workforce and a location and infrastructure where large qubit photonic quantum computers can be assembled, integrated, tested, and distributed.

Based on the amount of post-foundry work, development of the optical switch, and assembly that remains, and assuming no major technology problems or delays occur, I believe it will be after mid-decade before a photonic quantum computer of any scale can be offered by PsiQuantum.

Ill wrap this up with comments made by Dr. Shadbolt during our discussion about the optical switch. I believe it demonstrates why PsiQuantum has been, and will continue to be successful:

Even though the optical switch will obviously be a very powerful generic technology of interest to others, we are not interested in its generic usefulness. We are only interested in the fact that it will allow us to build a quantum computer that outperforms every supercomputer on the planet. That is our singular goal.

Paul Smith-Goodson is Vice President and Principal Analyst for quantum computing, artificial intelligence and space at Moor Insights and Strategy. You can follow him on Twitter for more current information on quantum, AI, and space.

Note: Moor Insights & Strategy writers and editors may have contributed to this article.

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Moor Insights & Strategy founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst Patrick Moorhead is an investor in dMY Technology Group Inc. VI, Dreamium Labs, Groq, Luminar Technologies, MemryX, and Movand

Read more from the original source:
PsiQuantum Has A Goal For Its Million Qubit Photonic Quantum Computer To Outperform Every Supercomputer On The Planet - Forbes

In July 2022, the Israel Innovation Authority announced a budget of NIS 100 million ($29 million) to build a quantum computing research center headed by Israeli startup Quantum Machines, which will also help create a quantum computer.

Israels new quantum computing center is part of the NIS 1.25 billion ($390 million) Israel National Quantum Initiative, launched in 2018 to facilitate relevant quantum research, develop human capital in the field, encourage industrial projects, and invite international cooperation on R&D.

Israel has about two dozen startups and companies currently focused on quantum technologies, including Quantum Machines, whichraised $50 millionlast September. The company was founded in 2018, and went on to develop a standard universal language for quantum computers, as well as a unique platform that helps them run.

According to the Times of Israel, Defense Ministrys Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) will issue a separate tender to finance the development of quantum technologies for military use for another NIS 100 million, the innovation authority said. According to their joint announcement Tuesday, the budget will fund two parallel avenues. The Israel Innovation Authority will focus on developing the infrastructure for quantum computational ability, which, it said, may include the use of technology from abroad. Meanwhile, the Defense Ministrys Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) will establish a national center with quantum capabilities that will work with academia, industry, and government partners to develop a quantum processor and a complete quantum computer.

Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Intel are allracingto make quantum computing more accessible and build their systems. Countries such as China, the US, Germany, India, and Japanare pouring millionsinto developing their quantum abilities.

According to recent marketprojections, the global quantum computing market size was expected to have been worth $487.4 million in 2021, and reach $3.7 billion by 2030. Israels $29 million is minuscule compared to the governments above, and the tech elephants.

These government-funded initiatives to achieve dominance in critical technology remind me of Japans Fifth Generation, which never really reached its goals.

Itamar Sivan, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines, said in a company statement that the project's goal was to give Israeli companies access to the most advanced quantum technologies and services so that they can develop deep quantum expertise across industry and academia. This expertise will allow Israeli companies across various sectors and industries to gain a leading global position.

Quantum Machines, founded in 2018, has built a hardware and software solution Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) for operating quantum systems to facilitate research and enable future breakthroughs. The startup also developed the QUA, a standard universal language for quantum computers that will allow researchers and scientists to write programs for varied quantum computers with one unified code. Quantum Machines, together with a consortium of Israeli and international quantum tech companies at the center, will build a quantum computer to be made available to the commercial and research communities.

Israels $29 million is minuscule compared to the governments above and tech elephants. According torecent market projections, the global quantum computing market is expected to grow from about $470 million in 2021 to about $1.765 billion by 2026.

Quantum Machines is an exciting company. They possess no quantum computer of their own, and their products are somewhat unique. While most quantum computers are in labs as objects of experiments by scientists, Sivan explained something I didnt realize to me. According to Sivan, a quantum computer needs three elements: a quantum computer and an orchestration platform of (conventional) hardware and software. There is no software in a quantum computer. The platform manages the progress of its algorithm mainly through laser beam pulses. The logic needed to operate the quantum computer resides with and is controlled by the orchestration platform.

The crucial difference between Google's and Quantum Machines' strategy is that Google views the current NISQ state of affairs as a testbed for finding algorithms and applications for future development. At the same time, Sivan and his company produced an orchestration platform to put the current technology into play. Their platform is quantum computer agnostic it can operate with any of them. Sivan feels that focusing solely on the number of qubits is just part of the equation.

The center will offer access to research and development on three quantum processing technologies superconducting qubits, cold ions, and optic compute and provide services to the Israeli quantum computing community, the Israel Innovation Authority said Sunday. As per the Times of Israel:

Ami Appelbaum, chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority, said the new center was 'the answer to an existing strategic market failure and is part of the authoritys policy of enabling the industry to maintain its leading position at the forefront of breakthrough and disruptive technologies.'

'Quantum computing is a technology Israeli industry cannot ignore,' said Israel Innovation Authority CEO Dror Bin in a statement Tuesday. 'The industry must develop knowledge and access to infrastructure in which it can develop growth engines for activities it will decide to lead.'

I've always believed that action speaks louder than words. While Google is taking the long view, Quantum Machines provides the platform to see how far we can go with current technology. As I wrote in The unpredictable rise of quantum computing - have recent breakthroughs accelerated the timeline?

Google suggests the real unsolved problems in fields like optimization, materials science, chemistry, drug discovery, finance, and electronics will take machines with thousands of qubits and even envision one million on a planar array etched in aluminum. Major problems need solving, such as noise elimination, coherence, and lifetime (a qubit holds its position in a tiny time slice).

Googles tactics are familiar. Every time you use TensorFlow, it gets better. Every time you play with their autonomous car, it gets better. Their collaboration with a dozen technically advanced companies improves their quantum technology.

Follow this link:
The Israel Innovation Authority is building a new quantum computing research center - what will the impact be? - Diginomica

COLLEGE PARK, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), an industry leader in quantum computing, today announced its participation in IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE22). The weeklong event will take place in Broomfield, Colorado, on September 18-23, 2022, and brings together some of the worlds leading quantum researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and academics to discuss and explore the latest advancements in the field of quantum.

IonQ co-founder and Chief Scientist Chris Monroe will keynote the event on September 19, where he will summarize the distinct advantages of trapped ion quantum computers in both academic and industrial settings, along with their uses in scientific and commercial applications. Fellow co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jungsang Kim will also be participating in a workshop program on September 20, focused on constructing control systems for trapped ion quantum computers.

Additional IonQ team members will also be joining a number of workshops and panel discussions throughout the week, exploring topics like working with the Microsoft Azure Quantum Platform, the need for low-level programming to deliver quantum advantage, and the key challenges when scaling towards practical quantum computing. Fellow panelists and workshop participants include researchers and executives from Microsoft, IBM, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and more.

Visit the conference page here to learn more about QCE22, or click here to learn more about IonQs latest updates to its IonQ Aria system.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. is a leader in quantum computing, with a proven track record of innovation and deployment. IonQ's current generation quantum computer, IonQ Forte, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems, including IonQ Aria, a system that boasts industry-leading 23 algorithmic qubits. Along with record performance, IonQ has defined what it believes is the best path forward to scale. IonQ is the only company with its quantum systems available through the cloud on Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as through direct API access. IonQ was founded in 2015 by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim based on 25 years of pioneering research. To learn more, visit http://www.ionq.com.

IonQ Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. Statements that are not historical in nature, including the words anticipate, expect, suggests, plan, believe, intend, estimates, targets, projects, should, could, would, may, will, forecast and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to IonQs ability to further develop and advance its quantum computers and achieve scale; IonQs ability to optimize quantum computing results even as systems scale; the expected launch of IonQ Forte for access by select developers, partners, and researchers in 2022 with broader customer access expected in 2023; IonQs market opportunity and anticipated growth; and the commercial benefits to customers of using quantum computing solutions. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: market adoption of quantum computing solutions and IonQs products, services and solutions; the ability of IonQ to protect its intellectual property; changes in the competitive industries in which IonQ operates; changes in laws and regulations affecting IonQs business; IonQs ability to implement its business plans, forecasts and other expectations, and identify and realize additional partnerships and opportunities; and the risk of downturns in the market and the technology industry including, but not limited to, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of IonQs Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2022 and other documents filed by IonQ from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and IonQ assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. IonQ does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

Link:
IonQ to Participate in IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE22) - Business Wire

At a glance.

Cisco Talos says the Russian threat actor Gamaredon (also known as Primitive Bear) continues to conduct espionage campaigns against Ukrainian organizations. The threat actor is using spearphishing emails to distribute malicious Microsoft Office documents:

"Cisco Talos discovered Gamaredon APT activity targeting users in Ukraine with malicious LNK files distributed in RAR archives. The campaign, part of an ongoing espionage operation observed as recently as August 2022, aims to deliver information-stealing malware to Ukrainian victim machines and makes heavy use of multiple modular PowerShell and VBScript (VBS) scripts as part of the infection chain. The infostealer is a dual-purpose malware that includes capabilities for exfiltrating specific file types and deploying additional binary and script-based payloads on an infected endpoint."

Kaspersky warns that the RedLine Trojan is being distributed with a bundle of malware that can spread itself by posting YouTube videos with malicious links. The researchers note that while this technique is unusual, it's achieved by "using relatively unsophisticated software":

"In addition to the payload itself, the discovered bundle is of note for its self-propagation functionality. Several files are responsible for this, which receive videos, and post them to the infected users YouTube channels along with the links to a password-protected archive with the bundle in the description. The videos advertise cheats and cracks and provide instructions on hacking popular games and software. Among the games mentioned are APB Reloaded, CrossFire, DayZ, Dying Light 2, F1 22, Farming Simulator, Farthest Frontier, FIFA 22, Final Fantasy XIV, Forza, Lego Star Wars, Osu!, Point Blank, Project Zomboid, Rust, Sniper Elite, Spider-Man, Stray, Thymesia, VRChat and Walken. According to Google, the hacked channels were quickly terminated for violation of the companys Community Guidelines."

Researchers at AdvIntel haveobservedmore than 1.2 million Emotet infections since the beginning of 2022. Most of the infections (35.7%) are located in the United States. The researchers also warn that the Quantum and BlackCat ransomware groups are now using the malware distribution botnet following the breakup of Conti in June 2022. BleepingComputeraddsthat significant spikes in Emotet activity were observed by both AdvIntel andESETin 2022.

According to Check Points visibility, however, the FormBook infostealer replaced Emotet as the most prevalent malware strain in August 2022, followed by the AgentTesla Trojan, the XMRig cryptominer, and the Guloader downloader.

Deloitte has published the results of a survey on awareness of cybersecurity risks related to quantum computing. The survey found that just over half (50.2%) of respondents are aware of harvest now, decrypt later attacks. These attacks involve stealing encrypted data and storing it until a quantum computer is developed that can break the encryption.

26.6% of respondents said their organization has already conducted a risk assessment on quantum computing risks, while 18.4% plan to conduct an assessment within one year.

Additionally, 27.7% of respondents said their organization would be most likely to address quantum risks following regulatory pressure, while 20.7% cited leadership demand within the organization to enable the cryptographic agility which can address the algorithms made obsolete by quantum computing.

Read more:
Gamaredon continues to target Ukraine. RedLine stealer disguised as game cheats. Emotet's place in the malware landscape. Quantum computing risks. -...

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zapata Computing, the leading enterprise quantum software company, today announced that it has made significant headway in its mission to get the University of Hull quantum-ready for future space exploration. One year into the collaboration both teams have seen enough progress to extend their plans for expanding the search for indicators of life in deep space.

Together, Zapata and the University of Hull developed new techniques to extrapolate meaningful data from noisy quantum devices and used it to calculate the ro-vibrational spectrum of hydrogen to obtain results that are comparable with the state-of-the-art classical simulations, as well as the experimental results. The results obtained with these new quantum techniques can already be used to detect molecular hydrogen in space.

A big part of the progress is due to the University of Hulls successful migration of Big Compute capabilities from classical to quantum computers. Big Compute is Zapatas term for the market category for heterogeneous and distributed compute resources needed to address enterprise and other technologically advanced organizations most computationally complex problems. It builds on previous technical revolutions like Big Data and AI and leverages a wide spectrum of classical (e.g., GPU, TPU, CPU), high-performance (HPC) and quantum compute resources (e.g., quantum-inspired computers, NISQ devices, fault-tolerant quantum computers).

In practical terms, this means that when more powerful and fault-tolerant quantum computers are available, the team of scientists at the University of Hull will be able to greatly increase the range of their exploration, the complexity and number of molecules that they can search for, and the speed with which they analyze their findings as they search for life beyond planet Earth.

The scale of what we are trying to accomplish today is daunting, said Dr. David Benoit, senior lecturer in Molecular Physics and Astrochemistry at the University of Hull. There are over 16,000 different life-indicating molecules that were searching for in space, but we could increase our search significantly with quantum computers as they become more powerful in the future. And were going to need that power. Were not looking for a needle in a haystack here. That would be easy. This effort is more like looking for a speck of dust in a warehouse through a straw.

Throughout the project, the teams have achieved several new discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. These discoveries led them to expect that the quantum algorithm will scale better than the classical one in the future, making it possible to study larger molecules that would not be possible with a classical computer. Zapata Computing and the University of Hull also documented this research and recently published a paper regarding the findings titled, A pathway to accurate potential energy curves on NISQ devices. The teams will also share the overview of the project and the results of the first year of work at Quantum.Tech London in their presentation on September 20 titled, Using quantum computers to look for alien life in deep space.

The sheer scale of what the University of Hull is trying to accomplish technically is a clear indication that the need for Big Compute capabilities today are critical to prepare for the quantum future ahead, said Christopher Savoie, CEO and co-founder of Zapata Computing. Theres no question that the discovery of life in deep space is difficult, but its a challenge that is perfect for a quantum computer and there are steps that the University of Hull is taking, similar to those many enterprises are taking, to make iterative progress and prep for these more powerful machines as they come online.

For more information about the presentation at Quantum.Tech and Zapata Computing and its work with the University of Hull, please visit http://www.zapatacomputing.com or stop by the Zapata Computing Booth (A3) at Quantum.Tech London.

About Zapata Computing

Zapata Computing, Inc. is the leading enterprise quantum software company. The Companys Orquestra platform supports the research, development, and deployment of quantum-ready applications for enterprises most computationally complex problems. Zapata has pioneered new methods in ML, optimization, and simulation to maximize value from near-term quantum devices, and partners closely with ecosystem hardware providers such as Amazon, D-Wave, Google, Quantinuum, IBM, IonQ and Rigetti. Zapata was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, visit http://www.zapatacomputing.com.

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Zapata Computing and The University of Hull Get Quantum-Ready For Ongoing Search for Life in Space - Business Wire