Protecting products, data, and the internet via crypto-technologies

©Mark Ollig


“In the coming years, hackers will get smarter, and so will we,” a PhD student said during the IBM Research Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas, NV.

IBM Research consists of 3,000 scientists working in 12 laboratories on six continents.

Andrea Kind is a computer scientist from IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland.

His presentation began by pointing out much of our merchandise, such as shirts, headphones, shoes, and the items we use for our health and safety, are being copied or counterfeited.

He called this “product piracy.”

I was surprised to learn the total value of counterfeited goods in 2015 was $1.8 trillion.

Kind cites how consumers don’t even know for sure if the replaced brakes on their cars are genuine or counterfeit.

In some areas of the world, 40 percent of parts manufactured in the automotive aftermarket are counterfeit.

He also explained how many counterfeit medicinal drugs are kept in unsanitary storage, or when their dates have expired, are recycled and sold as new.

Also, internet commerce has made it much easier to sell counterfeit products.

Kind spoke of a physical cryptographic anchor, or crypto-anchor, which is a new technology that can be used to ensure the authenticity of materials, safeguard personal data, and even verify our foods’ wholesomeness.

The crypto-anchor would communicate with a “prominence database,” which would record everything related to a product as it is shipped across a country or around the world.

He mentioned a technology called “blockchain,” which can be used to build a trusted version of a prominence database system.

IBM currently applies blockchain technology to their in-house documentation, but its use is limited.

Kind said crypto-anchors and blockchain technology will be used to link the entries within provenance databases to their defined business processes, and with the physical objects out in the real world.

He said within the next five years, crypto-anchors will cut in half the number of counterfeit goods that are linked to health and safety issues.

Provenance databases would keep track of a product’s lifetime information, from start to finish; along with providing authentication.

Kind talked about how today’s coding and programming has to do with the digital world; the code executes something in digital and returns something in digital.

He pointed out, non-digital items, such as paper documents, clothing, shoes, and food, exist in the real world.

Kind then presented one example of a crypto-anchor. Its programming code consisted of colored ink dots placed on micro pellets embedded inside a paper document.

The crypto-anchor’s scannable programming code authenticates the document’s originality, and where it has traveled.

A crypto-anchor is tinier than a grain of salt and can be thought of as the world’s smallest computer. Each contains a processor, memory, storage, and a communication module.

One crypto-anchor can contain several hundred thousand transistors, and will cost less than 10 cents to manufacture.

Crypto-anchors will monitor, analyze, and report any variations of the preset parameters of the item they are safeguarding.

IBM scientists say crypto-anchors can be combined with an optical sensor and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm for quickly scanning, identifying, and tracking products and materials.

Look for the Internet of Things (IoT) to use authenticating crypto-anchors embedded in everything from shoes, clothing, paper products, electronics, and wearables; to furniture, machinery, medicinal supplies, automotive parts, and more.

From a product’s point of origin, to when it is in the hands of the consumer, crypto-anchors will ensure authenticity.

Although in the prototype stage of development, IBM hopes the first crypto-anchors will be available to clients in 2019.

Cecilia Boschhini is a PhD student in privacy and lattice cryptography, and is a predoctoral researcher for IBM.

She explained cryptography as “the science, or even the art of designing protocols to protect your data.”

When we send and receive data over the internet, we are using what are called cryptographic schemes, such as when using a credit card at an online store.

Credit card information is encrypted using complicated mathematical algorithms to keep our personal data secure.

Boschhini states, future lattice-based security cryptography algorithms would be virtually unhackable using today’s most powerful computers.

What about using a quantum computer?

Let’s say you brought back from the future a quantum computer containing thousands of processing quantum bits (qubits) and, using Shor’s Algorithm – yes, you could easily solve (decrypt) today’s most stringent security encryption methods and essentially “hack the planet” for real.

Not to worry just yet, folks, as it will be decades before we see a fully-operational quantum computer working with thousands of qubits.

I do know, IBM is in the testing phase with a quantum computer using 50 qubits – so stay tuned.

Boschhini believes, by encoding lattice cryptography throughout the internet, its data will be virtually impossible – even for a future quantum computer – to override or hack.

She explained IBM is preparing themselves, their partners, and us for a full upgrade to secure internet infrastructures by creating advanced crypto-encryption protocols that are secure and resistant to cyber-attacks.

IBM will be working on this and other technologies with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

"In the coming years, hackers will get smarter, and so will we," Boschhini added.

Espresso overpowered my laptop

©Mark Ollig

A reader recently asked me what the first column I wrote for the paper was.

After digging through the archives, I found one from 1997.

It was the story about the person (me) who spilled cappuccino-espresso coffee all over their brand-new HP (Hewlett Packard) OmniBook laptop computer.

So, without further ado, here is “A Personal Experience,” originally published Dec. 15, 1997, and re-edited for today’s publication.

After drinking some fresh hazelnut cappuccino coffee, I placed the cup on the desk next to my laptop computer.

Over the course of the next hour, I took great care in making sure I didn’t commit the cardinal sin of all computer users: spilling something on the computer.

However, this time when I reached for the recently refilled cup, it fell over and spilled coffee on the laptop’s keyboard.

“I don’t believe I did this,” I blurted out loud to no one in the room, except my cat, who was staring at me.

After quickly disconnecting power from the computer, I moved it off the lake of cappuccino coffee which had pooled on top of my desk.

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel, ran back into the den, and was frantically wiping the coffee off the computer.

It was too late.

The espresso and steamed milk coffee had overwhelmed, and taken up residence inside my laptop computer.

Adding to my despair, the cat was still in the room observing my hysterics and appeared to be smiling at me.

After calming down, I logically assessed the situation.

I placed the computer back on the desk and pressed its power button.

Nothing happened. There were no lights, no sound – no nothing.

You know that sinking feeling one gets in the pit of their stomach when one realizes something terrible has occurred?

Yep. That’s what I was feeling.

A glimmer of hope arose when I remembered the computer was still under warranty.

“I’ll just drop it off and have it repaired or replaced,” I thought.

Before leaving the house, I put fresh food and water into the cat bowls, and said to my meowing cat, “Don’t make a mess while I’m gone.”

I placed the laptop on the passenger seat of my car and drove off to where I had purchased it.

As I walked into the computer showroom with the laptop tucked under my arm, a salesman walked up to me, looked at my computer with the coffee stains on it, smiled, and asked if I needed anything.

Yes, I know why he was smiling.

“Well, I had an accident and spilled cappuccino on my computer, but it should still be under warranty,” I told him.

He smiled and walked over to his computer to look up my warranty information.

By the way, I noticed there were no coffee cups near his computer.

“The good news is that the computer is still under warranty.” He said. “The bad news is that the warranty doesn’t cover spills. We could look at it and see if it can be repaired, though.”

Since I was there, I decided to have them try to repair my laptop.

While watching the computer technician working on my computer, I began to feel a little anxious; he was having a difficult time removing the laptop’s cover.

“They seem to put the screws on these computers in the hardest-to-find places,” the technician nervously said to me.

I smiled and thought maybe I should leave and come back later.

Reassuring the technician, I said, “Well, I know how it feels to have someone staring over your shoulder while you’re trying to work on something. I have a few things to do downtown, and will stop back in a half hour and see how you’re coming along.”

“Thanks,” the technician said with noticeable relief in his voice.

While driving, I pondered, “Maybe I should have taken the laptop battery out to see if it would work only with AC power. The battery itself could be shorted out.”

Thinking I had found the answer and could save time, I called the technician on my car phone and asked him to try that and see if it would power up.

A minute later I heard, “Nope. Good idea though,” the technician told me.

I sighed.

After driving around for 30 minutes, I went back to the store to ask how it was going.

“It is working now!” said the salesman, smiling as he approached me.

The technician had opened up the computer and used a compressed-air sprayer to dry out the electronic components.

“Shouldn’t be long now; there is just one minor thing we are checking,” the salesman told me.

I nodded and wandered around the store looking at the new computers on display.

Twenty minutes went by.

Walking back to the salesman, I asked how it was going with my computer.

“We can’t seem to get the mouse to work,” he told me.

“What mouse? I didn’t bring it in with my mouse,” I said.

“The technician had connected a mouse to your computer; it wasn’t working, so they thought there was another problem,” he replied.

“You need to use the specific mouse that operates with my laptop’s HP mouse driver file,” I responded.

The salesman stood silent; thinking about what I said, and then nodded his head.

“I’ll be back with your laptop in a minute,” he assuredly said to me.

I got my laptop back (after paying a nominal repair fee), and returned home.

After placing the computer back on the desk, I powered it up.

Everything booted up fine; my software programs (and mouse) worked as before.

This experience taught me a valuable lesson: keep the beverage cups away from the computer.

I want to end today’s column by wishing my mother, a happy 88th birthday, “Happy Birthday, Mom!”

Reminiscing and waving the American flag

©Mark Ollig


“Music played from the radio while my father swept the floor and I was cleaning off a table when, unexpectedly, the music stopped. Next, we heard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s voice,” my mother told me.

A few years ago, mom told me her memories of the day FDR gave his famous speech to Congress.

The date was Monday, Dec. 8, 1941; she was 11 years old.

Having just finished cleaning off the table as President Roosevelt began to speak, she remembered her father abruptly stopped sweeping the floor and focused his attention on the radio.

They both paused while listening intently to Roosevelt’s speech over the radio.

“Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan,” President Roosevelt said.

The Japanese military had attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, HI.

One strong memory of what happened right after Roosevelt finished his speech remains with my mom.

“My father was holding the broom with the handle touching the floor; he lifted the broom and pounded it down onto the wooden floor; the echo could be heard reverberating around the room as he raised his voice saying, ‘My God, we’re at war!’” she said, while raising her own voice for emphasis.

I asked if she would like to hear President Roosevelt’s speech again. She paused for a moment and then said, “Yes.”

With my smartphone, I did a quick search, and within seconds, my mother was once again hearing Roosevelt’s Dec. 8, 1941, speech.

While listening with her eyes closed, she nodded several times during the speech.

President Roosevelt finished his address saying; “. . . a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.” Mom paused, and then softly repeated the words her father had said those many years ago.

While reminiscing about how her family lived during the years of World War II, she recalled one famous US soldier, Audie Murphy.

Murphy was the most decorated US soldier during World War II and received every military medal of valor the US Army had.

“He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I went there years ago while in Washington, DC,” mom told me.

I searched online and quickly located a wealth of information about Audie Murphy, including photos of his white marble headstone at Arlington Cemetary.

July 3, 1955, Audie Murphy appeared on the TV game show “What’s My Line?,” which can be can be seen at http://www.audiemurphy.com/media.htm.

Mom told me that she and my father used to watch “What’s My Line” every Sunday night. She even remembered the name of the host, John Charles Daly.

Daly was also a journalist for CBS. He gave one of the very first radio bulletin reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, during the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.

We watched the segment of the “What’s My Line” show featuring Murphy’s appearance.

Mom recalled when she and her sister, Marguerite, visited the USS Arizona Memorial, at Pearl Harbor, in Honolulu, HI, in 1994.

On my smartphone, we listened to radio news bulletins and watched a few film clips taken Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.

We viewed a video of the current memorial site over the USS Arizona, and the local surroundings she and her sister visited.

Reminiscing about historical moments with someone who lived through them; especially listening to their memories of those times, is meaningful, to say the least.

During the Aug. 12 Winsted Grand Parade, mom, and other family members watched the long line of decorative floats passing by them along Fairlawn Avenue West.

As a group of military veterans began to approach, mom started to wave the American flag she was holding.

One of the veterans marching by was her brother, David, who served in the US Army.

Mom was all smiles and shouted, “Hi, Davey!”

David turned his head and noticed her waving the flag.

He smiled and shouted back, “Hey, Therese!”

Mom proudly waved the American flag as her brother walked past.

It was a good day.

Therese Ollig ready to wave the flag at the start
of the Winsted Grand Parade

It happens in an internet minute

©Mark Ollig

A recent report on US internet usage revealed 3.7 million queries are performed every minute using the Google search engine.

This breaks down to nearly 61,667 search queries per second – I know this because yours truly used a Google calculator to do the math part.

For most of us, the content of our inbox of email messages has increased to the point of becoming overwhelming; despite our best efforts to filter out the spam.

It’s not our fault. In fact, the number of emails being sent has gone up and through the roof of the internet.

For this year alone, it has been estimated over 187 million emails will be sent every minute.

Think of it. More than 8.2 trillion emails are generated each month, which means an estimated 98.4 trillion for the year.

These numbers are just mind-boggling.

It is challenging trying to keep our email inboxes clean of unwanted mail. Filtering tools help somewhat, but the spam emails will continue to be something we will just have to put up with.

Instead of entirely relying on email, I use an alternate system: my smartphone’s instant messaging.

I’ve actually become less dependent upon email by instead using my smartphone’s text messaging feature for most correspondences with family and friends.

I also use text messaging to confirm doctor appointments, receive notices for my pharmacy prescription pickups, banking information notifications, package deliveries, and as an alert for when my car is scheduled for maintenance.

Recent numbers show the number of text messages currently being sent over smart devices averages 18 million per minute.

People are spending more money this year conducting their business and shopping using online internet retailers, and traditional brick-and-mortar stores with a website. So far this year, the average amount spent is nearly $863,000 every minute. In 2017, the average was $751,000.

It’s no surprise; video content streamed over the internet is increasingly being watched by us.

The number of videos being viewed every minute using YouTube is now at 4.3 million. In 2016, it was 2.8 million videos per minute.

In 2017, 70,000 hours of video were being watched every minute on Netflix. This year, the number has dramatically increased to 266,000 hours per minute.

One daily morning routine for many of us is to log into Facebook.

The latest statistics show 973,000 Facebook logins are occurring each minute.

The number of software applications (apps) being downloaded to smartphones and smart devices every minute has substantially increased.

In 2016, the number of apps downloaded averaged 51,000 per minute.

Today, 375,000 individual app downloads happen every minute.

To put this into better perspective, I collected the estimated monthly statistics for 2018:

Facebook logins: 42.6 billion;

Google searches: 162.1 billion;

Emails sent: 8.2 trillion;

Internet shopping: $37.8 billion.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), an independent international organization, is one source I used for today’s numbers.

Several statistical numbers were provided to the WEF by Visual Capitalist, an emerging trends digital content provider.

Here is the final number I will leave you with; 120,280. This is the total number of views my weblog has received since May 2010.

Have a great week.

(Image right-to-use paid)

Bits & Bytes stats as of 08/08/2018

Technology ‘eyes’ sleeping employees

©Mark Ollig


Staring at the computer screen, you let out a big yawn and rub your eyes while seated at your office desk.

Maybe you were out late last night and did not get much sleep.

Anyway, you are exhausted; your eyelids begin to get heavy, the information you’re looking at on the screen becomes fuzzy, and your mind starts to wander.

You are getting sleepy . . . very sleepy. Your eyelids now close as you drift off to . . . “Wait a minute! What’s with the blast of cold air on my face?”

“Darn it, now I am wide awake,” you say to yourself.

We have just experienced a successful employee reawakening provided by new technology.

This new technology slyly uses the camera on your computer for scanning your eyelids to determine when you are falling asleep.

When your eyelids close for a specific amount of time, a blast of cold air from a nearby air-conditioning vent is directed at your face to awaken you so you can return to work.

No, I am not making this stuff up.

Electronics giant NEC, along with air conditioning manufacturer Daikin; both based in Japan, have joined forces in creating a system for monitoring the eyelids of employees using the camera connected to their computer.

Facial recognition technology from NEC (possibly their NeoFace software) will be used to monitor and analyze the eyelid movements of employees utilizing their computer’s camera.

We all notice the built-in camera on our laptops; heck, some of us even have taped a small piece of cardboard over the lens just in case some hacker remotely activates the camera and watches our activities from who-knows-where on the planet.

You do keep your computer camera lens covered when you’re not using it, right?

But, I digress.

The NEC facial recognition software notices when your eyes are closed while you are at your desk.

It will send an instruction message to the Daikin air conditioning system, along with your location.

The Daikin system then finds the nearest air vent at your location, and activates a burst of cold air, which of course, is directed towards you.

I imagine the system will determine the amount of coolness needed; if the person is known to be a heavy sleeper, it could send a colder stream of air in their face to wake them up.

For me, it might take an Arctic cold blast of air to wake me up. Of course, I have never fallen asleep at my computer – that I can recall.

The NEC-Daikin monitoring system will direct refreshing bursts of cold air towards an employee until they are no longer sleeping. This is determined by the NEC intelligent system “knowing” when your eyes are fully open and focused on the computer screen.

Eventually, future employees will need to get a good night’s sleep to avoid being sprayed with bursts of cold air – or who knows what else – in their face.

Other methods for keeping employees awake at work include lowering office temperatures, brightly painted walls, and automatic dispensing of “awakening fragrances” throughout an office.

Increasing the brightness of office lighting to keep employees attentive to their work is also used.

My personal suggestion is always to have the aroma from a freshly-brewed pot of coffee drifting throughout the office.

In addition to having the repeatedly refilled coffee cup near my keyboard, I also use a device plugged into my computer while working.

A small fan sits on my desk. It is powered from my computer’s USB port.

The cool breeze is refreshing, the whirring sounds are calming, and the humming noise from the fan blades helps to mask my tinnitus.

I also prefer working on my computer in a low-intensity lighting environment.

A Daikin spokesperson reportedly said the monitoring system would be commercially available in 2020.

No official name for this “eye-monitoring cold blast of air in your face system” has been publicly released.

It will be interesting to listen to the reactions of employees working at a company where this new monitoring system is put into operation. I will, of course, keep you posted.

Take comfort in knowing there will be no blasts of cold (or hot) air when you stop by the Bits & Bytes weblog at https://bitscolumn.blogspot.com.

My computer, USB fan,
 and the always-filled cup of coffee.