Technology

Get ready for a leaked look at the new iPhone XS. 9to5Mac has gotten its hands on an image of Applenext generation of iPhone hardware and the future looks pretty swanky.

The leaked image showcases the new sizing of Apple soon-to-be-unveiled flagship bezel-less devices which will likely have 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch screens respectively. The two sizes of phones which will be called the iPhone XS according to the report. The pictured devices represent the higher-end OLED screen models, not the cheaper rumored notch LCD iPhone.

The device will feature a new gold color shell. The iPhone X is currently available in space gray and silver.

Image credit: 9to5mac

A picture is worth a thousand words but there are still a lot of details we&re waiting on here obviously.Apple is expected to show off the new phone hardware as well as a new version of the Apple Watch at a hardware event on September 12.

The growth of cloud services — with on-demand access to IT services over the Internet — has become one of the biggest evolutions in enterprise technology, but with it, so has the threat of security breaches and other cybercriminal activity. Now it appears that one of the leading companies in cloud services is looking for more ways to double down and fight the latter. AmazonAWS has been working on a range of new cryptographic and AI-based tools to help manage the security around cloud-based enterprise services, and it currently has over 130 vacancies for engineers with cryptography skills to help build and run it all.

One significant part of the work has been within a division of AWS called the Automated Reasoning Group, which focuses on identifying security issues and developing new tools to fix them for AWS and its customers based on automated reasoning, a branch of artificial intelligence that covers both computer science and mathematical logic and is aimed at helping computers automatically reason completely or nearly completely.

In recent times, Amazon has registered two new trademarks, Quivela and SideTrail, both of which have connections to ARG.

Classified in its patent application as &computer software for cryptographic protocol specification and verification,& Quivela also has a Github repositorywithin AWS Labs& profile that describes it as a&prototype tool for proving the security of cryptographic protocols,& developed by the AWS Automated Reasoning Group.(The ARG also has as part of its mission to share code and ideas with the community.)

SideTrail is not on Github, but Byron Cook, an academic who is the founder and director of the AWS Automated Reasoning Group, has co-authored a research paper called &SideTrail: Verifying the Time Balancing of Cryptosystems.& However, the link to the paper, describing what this is about, is no longer working.

The trademark application for SideTrail includes a long list of potential applications (as trademark applications often do). The general idea is cryptography-based security services. Among them: &Computer software, namely, software for monitoring, identifying, tracking, logging, analyzing, verifying, and profiling the health and security of cryptosystems; network encryption software; computer network security software,& &Providing access to hosted operating systems and computer applications through the Internet,& and a smattering of consulting potential: &Consultation in the field of cloud computing; research and development in the field of security and encryption for cryptosystems; research and development in the field of software; research and development in the field of information technology; computer systems analysis.&

Added to this, in July, a customer of AWS started testing out two other new cryptographic toolsdeveloped by the ARG also for improving an organizationcybersecurity. Tiros and Zelkova, as the two tools are called, are math-based techniques that variously evaluate access control schemes, security configurations and feedback based on different setups to help troubleshoot and prove the effectiveness of security systems across storage (S3) buckets.

Amazon has not trademarked Tiros and Zelkova. AZelkova trademark, for financial services, appears to be registered as an LLC called &Zelkova Acquisition& in Las Vegas, while there is no active trademark listed for Tiros.

Amazon declined to respond to our questions about the trademarks. A selection of people we contacted associated with the projects did not respond to requests for comment.

More generally, cryptography is a central part of how IT services are secured: AmazonAutomated Reasoning Group has been around since 2014 working in this area. But Amazon appears to be doing more now both to ramp up the tools it produces and consider how it can be applied across the wider business. A quick look on open vacancies at the company shows that there are currently 132 openings at Amazon for people with cryptography skills.

&Cloud is the new computer, the Earth is the motherboard and data centers are the cards,& Cook said in a lecture he delivered recently describing AWS and the work that the ARG is doing to help AWS grow.&The challenge is that as [AWS] scales it needs to be ever more secure… How does AWS continue to scale quickly and securely

&AWS has made a big bet on our community,& he continued, as one answer to that question. Thatled to an expansion of the groupactivities in areas like formal verification and beyond, as a way of working with customers and encouraging them to move more data to the cloud.

Amazon is also making some key acquisitions also to build up its cloud security footprint, such as Sqrrl and Harvest.ai, two AI-based security startups whose founding teams both happen to have worked at the NSA.

AmazonAWS division pulled in over $6 billion in revenues last quarterwith $1.6 billion in operating income, a healthy margin that underscores the shift that businesses and other organizations are making to cloud-based services.

Security is an essential component of how that business will continue to grow for Amazon and the wider industry: more trust in the infrastructure, and more proofs that cloud architectures can work better than using and scaling the legacy systems that businesses use today, will bolster the business. And italso essential, given the rise of breaches and ever more sophisticated cyber crimes. Gartner estimates that cloud-based security services will be a $6.9 billion market this year, rising to nearly $9 billion by 2020.

Automated tools that help human security specialists do their jobs better is an area that others like Microsoft are also eyeing up. Last year, it acquired Israeli security firm Hexadite, which offers remediation services to complement and bolster the work done by enterprise security specialists.

Lenovogoing all-in on IFA this year. The company announced a new Chromebook, a Snapdragon powered Windows laptop and some smart home devices, among others. The most compelling bit from the bunch, however, has to be the Yoga Book C930.

The laptop follows in the footsteps of the Yoga Book A12, the convertible that was all the rage at IFA back in 2016. That device swapped the standard keyboard for a touchscreen, so the surface could double as a drawing pad. It wasn&t particularly conducive for typing, but it certainly was innovative.

The C930 takes things even further, swapping the Halo keyboard for E Ink. Itan interesting application for the technology, which has largely been relegated to the world of e-readers. The secondary display servce the same function as on the A12, doing triple duty as a keyboard, notepad and e-reader.

That functionality certainly makes the device a compelling proposition for students who are more intent on taking notes by hand than typing. Of course, like the A12, you&re sacrificing the tactility of a traditional keyboard and trackpad for the diversity of a secondary display. Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.

I haven&t had the opportunity to try the product out, so I can&t speak to the responsiveness of the on-board E Ink tech, but as anyone whoever used a Kindle can tell you, refresh rates can be killer on these sorts of devices.

The C930 will be available in October, starting at $1,000.