John McAfee-- antivirus company founder, alleged fraudster, murder suspect, man on the run-- now lies in police custody due to illegal entry in Guatemala after Vice Magazine revealed his location by accident.

"Now that I'm here I can speak freely. I can speak openly," McAfee tells reporters in Guatemala City before claiming he will expose corruption within Belize's government.

Belize president Dean Barrow however does not mince his words, saying "I don't want to be unkind to the gentleman, but I believe he is extremely paranoid, even bonkers."

Just when you thought the John McAfee saga could not get any stranger, guess what? It just did.

Toshiba claims it is closer towards achieving mainstream quantum cryptography-- researchers at the Toshiba European research laboratory and Cambridge University manage to extract single photons from regular telecoms fibre. 

Quantum cryptography involves the encoding each digit of a cryptographic key upon a single photon (or light particle). The interception of a single photon (as according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) disturbs its encoding, making potential hackers detectable and the cryptographic key unusable.

Current quantum cryptography systems demand the the use of a dedicated optical fibre separate from the line carrying the actual data. Such systems are believed to be already in use by governments and the military, using technology from firms such as ID Quantique and MagiQ. 

The Toshiba system does not need a separate fibre-- it makes use of a detector sensitive during the brief time window (100 millionths of a micro-second) at the estimated arrival of the single photons, while being insensitive to the scattered light from data signals.  Read more...

Genetec enters into a strategic multi-year alliance with Microsoft to develop hosted security solutions including video surveillance, access control and license plate recognition (LPR) as a Service that will be built on Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud-computing platform.

The new cloud-based security solutions will combine the strength of Genetec's unified security platform with the global reputation of Windows Azure. Genetec plans on delivering its first cloud-based service offering in the first half of 2013.

"Just as we pioneered IP video 15 years ago, we are now breaking new ground by using advanced cloud technology to make video and security applications even more accessible and meaningful for companies of all sizes," says Pierre Racz, Genetec's CEO. Read more...

Network security can be something of a dull job for human operators-- it mostly involves scanning through IP address lists and checking for signs of intruders. But what if such a task was transformed... into a videogame?

The Lincoln Laboratory at MIT presents such an approach to security at the IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing conference, with a first person shooter game set within a realistic 3D environment. 

Using the Unity gaming engine, the system combines data from network access control systems with plans of the building housing the Read more...