India •

Whatsapp Announced End-To-End Encryption For Millions Of Android Users

November 18, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

After experiencing childhood in Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s, Jan Koum, founder of Whatsapp figured out how to mistrust the government and despise its reconnaissance. After he moved to the United States and made ultra-popular messaging framework decades later, he pledged that Whatsapp would never make snooping simple for anybody. Presently, Whatsapp is following through on that anti-snooping pledge at a phenomenal scale.

Whatsapp reported on Tuesday that it’s incorporating end-to-end encryption, a move up to its privacy assurances that makes it almost unthinkable for anybody to peruse clients’ messages—even the organization itself. Whatsapp will incorporate the open-source programming Textsecure, made by security concentrated non-profit Open Whisper Systems, which scrambles messages with a cryptographic key that just the client can get to and never leaves his or her gadget. The result is for all intents and purpose un-crackable encryption for countless phones and tablets that have Whatsapp installed — by a few measures the world’s biggest ever implementation of this standard of encryption in a messaging service.

Moxie Marlinspike, Open Whisper System’s inventor and a well known software developer in the cryptography group said, “Whatsapp is incorporating Textsecure into the most prominent messaging application on the planet, where folks exchange billions of messages a day. I believe this is the biggest end-to-end encryption deployment ever.”

Textsecure has already been silently encrypting Whatsapp messages between Android gadgets for a week. The new encryption plan implies Whatsapp messages will now fly out the distance to the beneficiaries’ gadget before being decrypted, instead of simply being encoded between the client’s gadget and Whatsapp’s server. The change is almost undetectable, however Marlinspike says Whatsapp will soon add a peculiarity to permit clients to check each others’ identities on the basis of their cryptographic key, a resistance against man-in-the-center attacks that interrupt conversations. Marlinspike said, “Regular clients won’t spot the difference. It’s completely frictionless.”

In its beginning stage, however, Whatsapp’s messaging encryption is constrained to Android, and doesn’t yet apply to group messages, images or video messages. Marlinspike says that Whatsapp intends to expand its Textsecure rollout into other gimmicks and other platforms, including Apple’s iOS, soon. He wouldn’t point out a particular time period, and Whatsapp staff members declined to remark on the new encryption characteristics. Marlinspike says, the Textsecure execution has been in the works for 6 months, since soon after Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook last February.

So, for now, just Whatsapp’s Android users alone symbolize a huge new client base for end-to-end encrypted messages: Whatsapp’s page in the Google Play store records more than 500 million downloads. Formerly, Textsecure had been installed on just around 10 million devices running the Cyanogen mod variant of Android and around 500,000 different gadgets.

The only encrypted messaging framework that analyzes in size is Apple’s iMessage, which likewise claims of using a rendition of end-to-end encryption. As compared to Textsecure, nonetheless, Apple’s iMessage security has a few genuine weaknesses. iMessage doesn’t track which gadgets’ cryptographic keys are connected with a certain client, so Apple could basically make another key the client wasn’t known of to begin interrupting his or her messages. Also, numerous clients innocently back up their stored iMessages to Apple’s iCloud, which renders any end-to-end encryption debatable. Furthermore, dissimilar to Textsecure, iMessage doesn’t utilize an element known as “forward secrecy” that makes a new encryption key for each message sent. This implies that any individual who gathers a client’s encoded messages and effectively breaks a client’s key can unscramble all their conversations, not only the one message that uses that key.

Whatsapp’s rollout of such solid encryption to countless clients may be a disliked move among governments around the globe, whose scrutiny it could make significantly more troublesome. No doubt, Whatsapp’s client base is global, with extensive populaces of clients in Europe and India. In any case Whatsapp organizer Jan Koum has been vocal about his resistance to chipping in with government snooping. “I grew up in a society where all that you did was snooping on, recorded, squealed on,” he told Wired UK recently. “No one ought to have the right to listen snoop, or you turn into a totalitarian state — the sort of state I fled as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and opportunity of discourse. Our objective is to secure it.”

WWF Report Shows How The Last 40 Years Affected The Population Of Wildlife: Report

September 30, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

According to the recent reports of WWF (World Wide Fund), the population of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles chop down by 52% within 1970 to 2010, which believes to be far faster than ever thought.

On the other hand, the report of conservation group’s Living Planet, published every 2 years, stated that, the demands of human kinds are increased by 50%, which seems more than that the nature bears, trees felled, ground water pumped, CO2 emissions increased more than the Earth can bear (Reuters).

Ken Norris (Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London) stated, “This huge damage is not foreseeable, though the outcome of the way we choose to live.”

Moreover, the report stated that we can still cope with this situation if politicians and businesses took the right actions to save nature.

International Director of WWF, General Marco Lambertini stated, “It’s quite vital that we grab the opportunity in order to develop a sustainable future where people could live and prosper in harmony with nature.”

He further stated that we can’t preserve the nature by only protecting wild places, though it’s also about conservation of the humanity’s future, indeed, our only way to survive.

The major declines were in tropical regions, especially Latin America, report results on the populations of vertebrate wildlife discovered. WWF, which believes to be a “Living Planet Index”, is relying on the trends in 10,380 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian and fish species.

WWF told, the average 52% decline is much larger than the previously published reports, partially because these studies has based on more readily accessible information from Europe & North-America. According to the same report published 2 years back, stated the decline of 28% within 1970 to 2008.

Certainly, the worst decline was believed to be amongst the population of fresh water species, which is declined to 76% till 2010. On the other hand, marine and terrestrial decline is by 39%.

The report stated that, the major reason for the decline in populations happened due to the loss of natural habitats, exploitation due to hunting and fishing and most importantly due to climate change.

In order to measure the variation between the statistics of different countries experimental impact, the report gauged that how large an ‘ecological footprint’ each one had and how much productive land and water area, or “bio-capacity”, each country accounted for.

Furthermore the report revealed that Kuwaitis followed by Qatar and UAE had seems to be the largest ecological footprint so far, as they are consuming and wasting more resources as compared to any other nation.

The report stated, “ If everyone on this planet have the same footprint as of Kuwait & Qatar resident, then we probably need 4.8 planets and if we lived similar to an USA resident, then we need 3.9 planets.”

Some poorer countries such as India, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo also had ecological footprint that seems fine with the planet’s ability to absorb their demands.

India Reaches To Mars In Less Expensive

September 27, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 2 Comments

In the previous week, two spacecrafts arrived at the Red Planet. One of them is from US and the other is from India. Now both crafts are settled in their orbit and are collecting data. But Indian craft is working on its mission with the less fraction of cost as compared to NASA.

Amaresh Kollipara (Managing Partner of Earth 2 Orbit) says that, publicly available statics are 74mn dollars to 75mn dollars range. Bruse Jakosky researcher at University of Colorado Boulder and the primary investigator on the project says that, the cost of NASA mission is 637mn dollars and our project completes in less than what we expected. So, why did American mission cost so much more? Certainly, people have forgotten to ask this but we have been expecting this question, Jakosky said.

It means that there exists more than one reason why India’s mission cost less. First reason is the spacecraft itself is not that much stylish as compared to its NASA’s counterpart, and it’s not designated to last longer. Indian craft also contains less cameras and scientific doohickeys, and they also choose a cheaper orbit around mars. As NASA craft came nearer to the Mars then it fired its engines a lot, to slow itself to settle into a circular orbit. India’s craft did not need to slow down as much because it is orbiting in a big oval with Mars.

The disadvantage of Indian space craft is that, it only gets close to Mars once every few days. It possesses fewer firings of engine which means it need less fuel. It is also lighter in weight which made it much cheaper to launch. Jakosky says that, we have almost 600 peoples working on the project on Earth which made this launch much cheaper.

On the other hand, India has one of the best aerospace engineers and they are cheap too, Kollipara told. He further stated that, “I heard that an engineer got Rs. 50,000 to 60,000/month, which equals to 1000 dollars a month. I am quite sure that the NASA’s engineers could earn a lot more.”

Currently, India’s engineers are not just working to build rockets, but the country is making great efforts in terms of high-tech manufacturing, Kollipara revealed.

The industry is continuously expanding, he said. “We will likely to have more meticulousness manufacturing out of numerous industries, I believe, which will emerge out of India in the upcoming decade.”

Thought, our space goals aren’t ended either. Perhaps, the subsequent footstep would be putting an astronaut into orbit.

India reaches Mars: Mangalyaan sends its first picture from the red planet

September 25, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 1 Comment

According to the news that Just hours after making record by being the first Mars task to thrive in its first effort, Mangalyaan tweeted the first pictures of the surface of the red planet.

The Mars Orbiter, Mangalyaan, was already at work, captured its first images hours after it penetrated the range of the Red Planet, making India the first country to get done the achievement in its maiden attempt.

According to officials at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that Mangalyaan apparently captured five pictures on its first day in Martian range and India became only the fourth space group in the world, and the first in Asia, to put its spaceship in an orbit around Mars.

A higher ISRO spokesperson said that the first image, as seen above, has been taken from a height of 7,300 km; with 376 m spatial resolution and all the pictures are send and data is downloaded and we are reviewing the data thoroughly.

On the other hand, India’s Mars Orbiter spaceship did send in five images of the Red Planet’s surface by Wednesday, the Hindustan Times reported and the Mars Orbiter has ongoing sending images. A spokesperson said that we have received five images and these are being processed.

The ISRO panel also presented the set of images to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The spaceship included five main images, among which is the Mars Color Camera (MCC), a tri-color camera that will give images and information about the surface characteristics and composition of the planet and it will also be used to search the two satellites of Mars — Phobos and Deimos.

It is noted that the 475 kg Orbiter will take 77 hours or 3.2 earth days to revolve around the red planet and will study its land and mineral composition and examine its environment for methane gas in seek of life-sustaining components.

While the scientific goal of ISRO behind this mission was to extend technologies for interplanetary missions, its technical aspire is to discover the surface and environment of Mars and study the mineralogy, morphology and surface features.

Mission Accomplished: India successfully puts Satellite into Orbit around Mars

September 24, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

As per the official reports, India conquered its first ever inter-planetary mission of putting the satellite in to orbit around Mars on Wednesday. After the successful accomplishment of the mission, India is projected as an elite club of deep-space explorers.

The Indian TV has showed the live broadcast of the event. Researchers have welcomed with the wild applause while the engines successfully completed its burn-time of 24-mins to contrive the spaceship into its specified place around the red-planet.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated, “With the successful completion of this mission, we have moved afar from the border-lines of human enterprise and innovation.” He further congratulated the researcher for the accomplished mission and said, “We have steered our spaceship via route that is known to few.”

However, the scientist also explained the further stages of the Mars Orbiter Mission. They nicknamed the mission as MOM. After the successful mission of the space program, the scientist called it as a milestone in revealing that they can conduct more complex missions and operate as a global-launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites.

This was considered to be the major achievement for an under develop country like India who have 1.2bn people from which most are poor. Meanwhile it has good scientific and technical education system, which produced so many engineers, doctors, and software programmers every year.

India portrays MOM to be the first successful mission on Mars attempted by any under-develop country. Though, the ESA (European Space Agency), which is considered as the conglomerate of several nations, did its first Mars mission back in 2003.

On the other hand, China, which is a biggest rival of India, also, expanding its space exploration programs along with a space-lab in the orbit before the establishment of the permanent space-station.

No doubt, putting a spacecraft in to an orbit around Mars is not an easy task to do. Half of the World countries already had attempted out of which 23 missions have failed from the entre 41 missions. Indian named this spaceship as ‘Mangalyaan’ in Hindi, which means ‘Mars Craft’. Furthermore, India is expecting this spaceship to be a universal promotion for its ability in designing, preparation and managing a difficult, deep-space mission.

Though, India have already completed some of the successful missions of satellite launches involving transferring the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which revealed key facts of water on the moon in 2008. Moreover, they are planning to send the Rover on the moon.

Categories