Welcome to the March 12, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• NIST Selects HQC as Fifth Algorithm for Post-Quantum Encryption
• Pentagon Shifts Software Buying Process
• IT Unemployment Jumped in February
• DOJ Doubles Down on Request to Break Up Google
• Prosthetic Hand Knows How Hard It Can Squeeze Stuff
• Lasers, Magnets, and the Fight to Store the World's Data
• Light-Speed Chip Unveiled
• Cybercrime's Cobalt Strike Use Plummets 80%
• How the Biggest Crypto Heist in History Went Down
• Europe Bets on RISC-V for Supercomputing Sovereignty
• Low-Power Brain Chip Predicts Users' Intentions
• Cat-Eared Robots Wait Tables in Japan's Restaurants
• Researchers Release Kit to Exploit Vulnerability in Zen Chips

NIST Selects HQC as Fifth Algorithm for Post-Quantum Encryption

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced the selection of its fifth algorithm for post-quantum encryption. The HQC algorithm will serve as a backup for ML-KEM, the main algorithm for general encryption. HQC is based on different math than ML-KEM, which could be important if a vulnerability were discovered in ML-KEM. NIST plans to issue a draft standard incorporating the HQC algorithm next year, with a finalized standard expected in 2027.
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Pentagon Shifts Software Buying Process

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is changing how it buys software with an eye toward greater access to commercial and non-traditional software. A March 6 memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directs the DoD to prioritize the new software acquisition approach to maximize the “lethality” of the U.S. military.
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IT Unemployment Jumped in February

IT unemployment increased almost half a percentage point last month to 3.3%, the highest it has been since August 2024, a CompTIA review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Employers added an estimated 177,000 tech positions across all industries during February, with almost 500,000 job postings for technology roles remaining active. Said CompTIA's Tim Herbert, "With many companies taking a wait-and-see approach with uncertainty, increases in hiring pauses could leave potential tech hires waiting."
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DOJ Doubles Down on Request to Break Up Google

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reiterated its demand that a court break up Google, following a ruling last year by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for D.C. that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search by paying Web browsers and smartphone manufacturers to feature its search engine. The judge is scheduled to hear arguments on proposed solutions from both sides in April.
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Prosthetic Hand Knows How Hard It Can Squeeze Stuff

Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a robotic hand equipped with three layers of bioinspired tactile sensors that help it distinguish among objects and grasp them with an appropriate amount of pressure. The prosthetic has five articulating fingers comprised of rubber like-polymers with a rigid, 3D-printed skeleton. Controlled via electromyography signals, the robotic hand uses machine learning algorithms to translate its sensors' signals into electric nerve stimulation.
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Lasers, Magnets, and the Fight to Store the World's Data

Data-storage company Seagate is betting its heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology will help hard drives maintain their market dominance as solid-state drives gain steam for their ability to read and write faster than their predecessors. Seagate's new drives feature a small laser that applies a nanosecond of heat to magnetically manipulate bits smaller than used previously. Each wafer holds 100,000 read-write heads that encode data.
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Light-Speed Chip Unveiled

Researchers at China's Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Aerospace Information Research Institute, and the University of California, Santa Barbara developed a 100-gigahertz optical chip that produces clock signals through photons. Because light travels faster than electricity, information can be processed faster using photon clocks. An on-chip microcomb, meanwhile, synthesizes single-frequency and wideband signals covering a broad frequency band.
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Cybercrime's Cobalt Strike Use Plummets 80%

Since 2023, there has been an 80% decline in malicious use of Fortra's Cobalt Strike, a red-teaming tool legitimately used to simulate threats and find weaknesses in target systems. Over that period, cybersecurity solutions firm Fortra, working with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit and the nonprofit Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, have seized hundreds of servers tied to cracked versions of Cobalt Strike.
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How the Biggest Crypto Heist in History Went Down

The Lazarus Group achieved the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history by taking advantage of security flaws at the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which said the North Korean state-backed hackers stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum by breaking into a computer belonging to a developer at Safe, which offers a free storage tool used by Bybit.
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Europe Bets on RISC-V for Supercomputing Sovereignty

More than three dozen tech players together founded Digital Autonomy with RISC-V in Europe (DARE), a group with the goal of developing three RISC-V chiplets within three years to power Europe's supercomputers and other high-performance computers. The initiative, backed with funding of 240 million euros, is being coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center with support from the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
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Low-Power Brain Chip Predicts Users' Intentions

An intracortical brain-computer interface (iBCI) developed by San Diego State University researchers eliminates the need for users to switch on the brain chip manually. Once implanted, the iBCI monitors the local field potentials (LFPs), or general activity of a cohort of neurons, activating when certain thresholds of neural activity are reached. Testing showed the LFP approach consumed much less energy while performing comparably to conventional brain chips that monitor individual neurons.
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Cat-Eared Robots Wait Tables in Japan's Restaurants

Service-sector businesses in Japan increasingly are relying on robots to work alongside older or foreign workers, taking on more physical roles or helping navigate language barriers at a time when the nation is facing a severe labor shortage. Skylark Holdings Co., Japan's biggest table service restaurant chain, has deployed about 3,000 cat-themed robots that deliver orders to customers in its restaurants.
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Researchers Release Kit to Exploit Vulnerability in Zen Chips

Google researchers found and released the details of an exploit that essentially allows anyone to jailbreak their own AMD CPUs. The so-called EntrySign vulnerability lets users send custom microcode to any AMD CPU using the Zen 1 to Zen 4 architectures to alter how the processor runs, which would enable them to access internal CPU buffers and strengthen or weaken virtual machine (VM) security, among other things.
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