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q.kontinuum wrote in with the following story of ransomware evolution:

I read on heise online (a German IT news site) that the CTB-locker ransomware trojan now focuses on attacking websites. [Original in German, google translate -Ed.] I have been wondering for some time when something like this would happen. The current version of the trojan seems to be implemented in PHP. How it finds its way to the web-servers is not yet clear, but according to heise online it appears that the majority of the affected web-sites were running word-press.

According to the bleepingcomputer.com news site, the initiators of CTB-Locker are using an affiliate-model to propagate the script. People already having access to hacked servers can support them and get a cut of the profits.

The trojan uses a file "extensions.txt" to specify which files to encrypt. I wonder what happens if this file already exists, belongs to root, and is immutable. Unfortunately I didn't find any information to which path the trojan wants to write this file.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Details remain scarce regarding the second arrest of corrupt Silk Road investigator Shaun Bridges, but in a new court filing, prosecutors insist that the details remain under seal—in part, because they believe he has one or more co-conspirators.

Following the trial and conviction of Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, two federal agents, Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, were charged with stealing from the Silk Road even while they were investigating it.

Bridges used admin privileges, taken from an arrested Silk Road admin, to steal $800,000 worth of bitcoins from Silk Road drug dealers. He pled guilty last year, and in December he was sentenced to nearly six years in prison.

Previously:
Inquiry of Silk Road Website Spurred Agents' Own Illegal Acts
Silk Road "Mentor" Arrested in Thailand

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

It wasn't entirely shocking when Google quit the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), openly accusing the group of lying about climate change. But when oil companies started leaving too, it really did start to look like the writing was on the wall for hardcore climate denialism.

Now Cleantechnica reports that Ford is calling it quits too, refusing to renew its membership in the group which has pushed hard against renewable energy mandates and incentives, and which has been linked to efforts to muddy the issue of climate change education too.

Original Submission

frojack writes:

Plaintiffs had no First Amendment right to take cellphone video of police, federal judge rules.

A Temple University student took a cellphone photo of about 20 police officers standing outside a house party because he thought it would be an interesting picture.

In a separate incident, a trained legal observer tried to move closer to see and possibly record an arrest during a protest of hydraulic fracturing.

The cases were consolidated (for un-stated reasons) and U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney said that both subjects would have to show their behavior was "expressive conduct" to support a First Amendment claim.

Neither plaintiff could meet that burden because neither told the police at the time why they wanted to capture the images.

Original Submission

hemocyanin writes:

Yet again, metric to imperial conversion errors cause dangers. This one isn't so bad as the Mars Climate Orbiter we all know about, but it also brings the problem down to earth and raises public health issues.

Lumber Liquidator's Chinese suppliers lied about the amount formaldehyde offgassing from laminate flooring sold by the chain. The story came out about a year ago. More recently, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) tested the flooring material and concluded that the material wasn't as bad as initially thought. That is until the old metric/imperial conversion error became evident:

The CDC's error was on the calculation for ceiling height used to measure the intensity of formaldehyde exposure. So instead of using 8 feet as the standard height of a room, for instance, it used 8 meters, which is about 26 feet.

In the initial report, the CDC said risks of cancer were as many as nine cases in 100,000 people. Now it's increased that to as many as 30 people. But it said the recommendations on dealing with the level of formaldehyde will likely remain the same -- stressing taking steps to reduce exposure.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-lumber-liquidators-f8ce1b14-da42-11e5-8210-f0bd8de915f6-20160223-story.html

Seriously -- we all know that moving decimals is so much easier than dealing with imperial units (example: how many inches in a quarter mile? I'm not some math savant so I'd need to get a calculator or at least pen and paper. How many centimeters in a quarter kilometer? 25000 (took me one second: take 250m as a quarter km, tack on two zeros, done)). Can't we just switch already? The amount of wasted brain cycles spent on this stupid issue could be put to much more productive use.

Original Submission

John McAfee offers to unlock killer's iPhone

An Anonymous Coward writes:

McAfee says that he and his team can break into the phone within three weeks. McAfee states his motive for the offer is because "he didn't want Apple to be forced to implement a 'back door'".

Bill Gates Takes Middle Road in FBI iPhone Unlock Dispute

takyon writes:

Bill Gates has apparently sided with the FBI in the dispute over the unlocking of a "specific" iPhone, breaking with other technology industry leaders:

Apple should comply with the FBI's request to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism case, Microsoft founder Bill Gates says, staking out a position that's markedly different from many of his peers in the tech industry, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The two titans aired their views on what's become a public debate over whether Apple should be compelled to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. "This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case," Gates told the Financial Times.

However, in a follow-up interview with Bloomberg, Gates said he was disappointed by reports (such as my original submission #2 below) that he had sided with the FBI in its legal dispute with Apple:

In an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Gates says he was "disappointed" by reports that he supported the FBI in its legal battle with Apple, saying "that doesn't state my view on this." Still, Gates took a more moderate stance than some of his counterparts in the tech industry, not fully backing either the FBI or Apple but calling for a broader "discussion" on the issues. "I do believe that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the government, on our behalf — like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future — that that is valuable." But he called for "striking [a] balance" between safeguards against government power and security.

[Continues.]

mendax writes:

Imagine a world in which cancer not only spreads throughout a patient's body, it is also contagious and can spread from person to person. The New York Times published an article that discusses exactly that possibility, and how it actually has happened.

For all its peculiar horror, cancer comes with a saving grace. If nothing else can stop a tumor's mad evolution, the cancer ultimately dies with its host. Everything the malignant cells have learned about outwitting the patient's defenses — and those of the oncologists — is erased. The next case of cancer, in another victim, must start anew.

Imagine if instead, cancer cells had the ability to press on to another body. A cancer like that would have the power to metastasize not just from organ to organ, but from person to person, evolving deadly new skills along the way.

While there is no sign of an imminent threat, several recent papers suggest that the eventual emergence of a contagious human cancer is in the realm of medical possibility. This would not be a disease, like cervical cancer, that is set off by the spread of viruses, but rather one in which cancer cells actually travel from one person to another and thrive in their new location.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

Israeli security guards at the Kerem Shalom border crossing into the southern Gaza Strip and Shin Bet operatives recently foiled an attempt to smuggle drones into the Palestinian enclave, the Defense Ministry announced Sunday.

During a search of an Israeli vehicle carrying toys, security guards found several drones of different sizes and types, all of which were equipped with quality cameras. Additional smuggling attempts of drones have been foiled by the Shin Bet in recent weeks.

The drones were apparently set to be used for spying on Israeli targets, the Defense Ministry said.

Israeli authorities launched an investigation into the smuggling attempts.

In March, Hamas drones reportedly flew out of the Gaza Strip and into Egyptian airspace above the Sinai Peninsula several times as the Egyptian army stood by helpless to prevent the incursions. Egyptian radar picked up three drones flying out of the southern Gaza Strip on numerous occasions, the Egyptian Al Osboa newspaper reported. The unmanned aerial vehicles penetrated as far as El Arish and Sheikh Zuweid, some 50 kilometers from the Egypt-Gaza border.

Border forces opened fire on the drones but couldn't hit them because they were flying at an altitude of 750 meters (2,250 feet), the report said. Under the terms of the 1979 peace deal with Israel, Egypt is not allowed to station any anti-aircraft weapons in the Sinai region.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-thwarts-attempt-to-smuggle-drones-into-gaza/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A new minor release of Tails*, an operating system focussed on privacy and anonymity, has been made. In version 2.0.1 the browser was updated, fixing two security bugs. Security problems in Virtualbox, curl, OpenJDK, Kerberos, and the TIFF library were also corrected. The new version can again boot on 32-bit computers that have UEFI.

* The Amnesic Incognito Live System

Previously: TAILS Linux 1.3.2 is Released

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

According to the New York Times the Obama administration has submitted its plan to close the controversial Guantánamo Bay Prison:

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday sent Congress a long-awaited plan for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, beginning a final push to fulfill a campaign promise and one of his earliest national security policy goals in the face of deep skepticism from many Republican lawmakers.

takyon: The President's plan faces opposition from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and the prison is unlikely to close before he leaves office. Additionally, the plan wouldn't technically "close" the prison, but would move any indefinitely detained people to the United States:

Legal observers note the White House wouldn't truly "close" the prison, but rather move people who may need to be detained indefinitely into the United States — to the chagrin of human rights groups. [...] Even people who unequivocally endorsed the plan sounded equivocal: Former Rep. Jane Harman called it "the least bad option under the circumstances."

Harman, now director of the Wilson International Center for Scholars, urged Obama last year not to close the prison until there was a way to house detainees who can't be tried under any circumstances because evidence against them was gathered through torture, but who are considered too dangerous to release. (About 46 detainees fall under that category.) She and Jack Goldsmith, a Bush-era Justice official, outlined a plan to periodically review how dangerous detainees are, holding out the possibility of release if they're deemed safe. Obama adopted that approach in the plan released Tuesday.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 provided the basis for this story.

[Todd] French, a 48-year-old associate professor at Mississippi State University (MSU), has convinced the school and the US Department of Energy to build him a Sustainable Energy Research Center—a large building designed around French's novel ideas about converting sewer sludge into biodiesel. Based on numbers from French's pilot project, if 50 percent of US wastewater treatment plants used his extraction process, the country could generate nearly 2 billion gallons of biodiesel a year. Although that's only 0.5 percent of the national diesel demand, French believes it can still revolutionize our economy in the process.

[...] He later found an outlet for his curiosity as an associate professor at MSU, where he teamed up with chemical engineers Rafael Hernandez and Mark Zappi.

[...] [Bacteria] double rapidly, and cell membranes contain phospholipids with two long-chain fatty acids of hydrogen and carbon. These fatty acids are "saponifiable," which means that they can be used to make fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), greasy stuff that could lead to vegetable oil. If you could invent a way to raise the fat content in bacteria, you could extract a decent amount of this oil, which could then undergo transesterification for fuel production. Samples taken to French's lab verified that a mixture of FAMEs could meet international requirements for biodiesel. But growing bacteria in the massive quantities needed for fuel was expensive.

Six months later, when Zappi and Hernandez were doing consulting jobs at wastewater treatment plants, French brought up the carbon issue again. This time, Zappi's tone changed. "Why would I grow bacteria?" he said. "A wastewater treatment plant has to pay to get rid of that excess sludge."

The story continues with French meeting "Jason Campbell [who] has been the recycling coordinator at Sonoco for 12 years. Part of his job is finding new ways to limit the environmental footprint of corporate partner Unilever—a behemoth that makes more than 9,000 products, ranging from shampoo to Klondike Bars." Unilever, at one of its ice cream facilities, sends out 2,000 tanker trucks, each containing 6,000 gallons of sludge at a cost of $1.4 million per year. Applied to all of Unilever's production facilities worldwide it would generate a half billion dollars of profit per year.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/02/google-fiber-teams-with-huntsville-utility-to-expand-broadband/

Google Fiber said on Monday that it plans to bring its gigabit Internet service to Huntsville, Alabama. But instead of laying its own fiber, Google will offer service over a network that is being built by the city-owned Huntsville Utilities. Huntsville will lease space on the network to Google so it can offer Internet service. But it's not an exclusive deal, so other Internet providers could offer broadband over the same fiber. Huntsville, a city of nearly 190,000 residents, has been planning the fiber build for more than a year.

City officials "see it as a low-risk investment, as compared to administering the gigabit Internet themselves, which would require a massive increase in personnel in an arena where they have limited expertise," local news station WHNT reported today. Google Fiber should be available to the first Huntsville customers by the middle of 2017, but it could take a few years to extend service throughout the city, the report said.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

If you get very, very lucky when you're doing the dishes, the water streaming out of your tap might occasionally splash onto a bowl or spoon in just the right way and spread out into a flawless hemispherical water curtain that means you can stop doing the dishes for a while to admire it. 

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group have learned to do it on purpose. They've created HydroMorph: a "dynamic spatial water membrane (pdf)" that can turn this pleasingly curvy splash into a flapping bird, form it into an interactive countdown timer, direct it into a cup, and do all kinds of other things that water shouldn't really be able to do.

There's a video of the project worth watching. Cool stuff.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward suggested a story based on an article appearing in the prestigious journal Nature — http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-a-tragedy-of-errors-1.19264:

Just how error-prone and self-correcting is science? We have spent the past 18 months getting a sense of that.

We are a group of researchers working on obesity, nutrition and energetics. In the summer of 2014, one of us (D.B.A.) read a research paper in a well-regarded journal estimating how a change in fast-food consumption would affect children's weight, and he noted that the analysis applied a mathematical model that overestimated effects by more than tenfold. We and others submitted a letter1 to the editor explaining the problem. Months later, we were gratified to learn that the authors had elected to retract their paper. In the face of popular articles proclaiming that science is stumbling, this episode was an affirmation that science is self-correcting.

Sadly, in our experience, the case is not representative. In the course of assembling weekly lists of articles in our field, we began noticing more peer-reviewed articles containing what we call substantial or invalidating errors. These involve factual mistakes or veer substantially from clearly accepted procedures in ways that, if corrected, might alter a paper's conclusions.

[Continues.]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/20/nasa-record-number-astronaut-applications/

Apparently, everyone wants to be an astronaut. NASA has received a record number of applications for its open astronaut positions from mid-December 2015 until February 18th. Over 18,300 hopefuls submitted their resumes, almost thrice as many compared to the agency's last hiring round in 2012. This round has shattered the previous record set way back in 1978, wherein 8,000 people tried to get a spot in the agency's roster of space explorers.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said it's "not at all surprising [...] that so many Americans from diverse backgrounds want to personally contribute to blazing the trail on our journey to Mars." The fact that it's been four years since the agency hired its last batch of astronauts most likely contributed to the the number of applications. But there are probably other factors at play: for one, NASA has been doing a great job connecting with the common folk via social media. All the astronaut blockbusters in recent years, such as Gravity, Interstellar and The Martian, could have also contributed to the surge of interest in space exploration.

Of the 18,300 applicants, only eight to 14 will get their dream job.

Original Submission