A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – North and South Korea are suddenly on a fast track to direct bilateral talks without the United States or China — an unexpected development at a moment of heightened tensions that intelligence sources say is being driven by several factors, including Pyongyang’s desire to sidestep Trump administration-backed sanctions.

A day after President Trump bluntly warned the North about the U.S. military’s ability to respond with overwhelming force to any nuclear attack from Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reopened a direct cross-border communication channel with South Korea for the first time in nearly two years Wednesday, as the rivals explored the possibility of direct talks and diplomatic overtures after months of acrimony and fears of war.

Mr. Kim’s offer, which was read by a senior Pyongyang official on state TV, followed a South Korean offer on Tuesday of high-level talks with North Korea to find ways to cooperate on next month’s Winter Olympics in the South, among other issues, The Associated Press reported. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Billions of devices might be at risk after researchers found two security flaws inside Intel chips that allow hackers to enter processors and steal sensitive data.

Intel chips have been installed in devices since 1995 and the researchers said every device now contains those security flaws. But the flaws aren’t limited to personal devices. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform may also be affected.

The two bugs are called Meltdown and Spectre, with the latter being potentially more widespread.

“Almost every system is affected by Spectre,” researchers said in a report. “Desktops, laptops, cloud servers, as well as smartphones. More specifically, all modern processors capable of keeping many instructions in flight are potentially vulnerable. In particular, we have verified Spectre on Intel, AMD and ARM processors.” [ Source: UPI (Read More…) ]