Australia vs. encryption: The Australian Parliament has passed a law that requires tech companies to give law enforcement agencies there access to encrypted communications, the New York Times reports. Several tech companies and privacy groups opposed the law, saying it hurts efforts to protect data from hackers. Fortune, which called the law “draconian,” says it will create headaches for large tech companies.
Slow rolling: While several news stories this year talked about quantum computing being an eventual threat to encryption, that possibility is still more than a decade away, according to a report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The U.S. may need to invest heavily in quantum computing to retain a global lead in the technology, the report recommends. Nextgov has the story.
Filling the pipes: Botnets of compromised Internet of Things devices make up more than three quarters of the malware on communication service provider networks this year, up from 33 percent of the malware in 2016, Infosecurity reports. Hackers are increasingly targeting IoT devices instead of PCs and other traditional systems.
Blockchain tackles phishing: A company called MetaCert wants to use blockchain to help fight the scourge of phishing emails, Wired.com reports. The company has been complying a database of web addresses known to be used by phishers and a database of safe addresses, and it plans to use blockchain to help people submit addresses for the lists.
Router mining: About 415,000 routers are compromised by cryptocurrency miners, BTCManager.com says. The number of compromised routers has grown significantly in recent months.
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