SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

The US Military Just Publicly Dumped Russian Government Malware Online

Usually it's the Russians that dump its enemies' files. This week, US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), a part of the military tasked with hacking and cybersecurity focused missions, started publicly releasing unclassified samples of adversaries' malware it has discovered.

CYBERCOM says the move is to improve information sharing among the cybersecurity community, but in some ways it could be seen as a signal to those who hack US systems: we may release your tools to the wider world.

"This is intended to be an enduring and ongoing information sharing effort, and it is not focused on any particular adversary," Joseph R. Holstead, acting director of public affairs at CYBERCOM told Motherboard in an email.

On Friday, CYBERCOM uploaded multiple files to VirusTotal, a Google-owned search engine and repository for malware. Once uploaded, VirusTotal users can download the malware, see which anti-virus or cybersecurity products likely detect it, and see links to other pieces of malicious code.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Iconic Westworld set burns down in California wildfire

Old West-style buildings used in the production of HBO's Westworld, as well as in other shows and movies, have been destroyed by the fast-moving Woolsey Fire now sweeping through Southern California.

The fire ruined buildings at Paramount Ranch, one of the locations used during seasons 1 and 2 of Westworld.

"Westworld is not currently in production, and as the area has been evacuated, we do not yet know the extent of the damage to any structures remaining there," HBO said in a statement. "Most importantly, our thoughts go out to all those affected by these horrible fires."

The official Twitter account of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area shared a photo of the structures as they looked before the fire, with the message, "We are sorry to share the news that the #WoolseyFire has burned Western Town at #ParamountRanch in Agoura."

Westworld was far from the only production to take advantage of the Old West-style buildings and setting for filming. Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, the 1990s Western drama starring Jane Seymour filmed there, as well as 1968's Herbie The Love Bug, the acclaimed HBO series Carnivale and more were all filmed there.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Dry conditions may have helped a new type of plant gain a foothold on Earth

Researchers have long believed that falling carbon dioxide levels drove the origin of plants with this innovation, but a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on biochemical modeling by a group led by University of Pennsylvania biologists and paleoclimate modeling by a group at Purdue University, indicates that water availability may have been the critical factor behind the emergence of C4 plants.

"The initial origin of C4, which happened when atmospheric carbon dioxide was still very high, seems driven by water limitation," says Haoran Zhou, a graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences' Biology Department and first author on the paper. "Then later, about 5 to 8 million years ago, there's a large expansion of C4 grasslands. That's because carbon dioxide was getting lower and lower. Carbon dioxide and light intensity were actually the limiting factors favoring C4 at that time."

"What we show," says Erol Akçay, an assistant professor of biology at Penn, "is that the increased water efficiency of the C4 pathway is enough to give it an initial ecological advantage in relatively arid environments. That's the benefit of doing this type of physiological modeling. If you were only looking at temperature and carbon dioxide, you might miss this role of water and light."

The researchers' work also suggest that C4 plants may have had a competitive advantage over C3 plants even when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were still relatively high, in the late Oligocene.

"The inference is that C4 could have evolved quite a bit earlier than we previously thought," says Penn's Brent Helliker, an associate professor of biology who, along with Akçay, serves as Zhou's advisor. "This supports some molecular clock estimates for when C4 evolved as well."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Astronomers find pairs of black holes at the centers of merging galaxies

For the first time, a team of astronomers has observed several pairs of galaxies in the final stages of merging together into single, larger galaxies. Peering through thick walls of gas and dust surrounding the merging galaxies' messy cores, the research team captured pairs of supermassive black holes—each of which once occupied the center of one of the two original smaller galaxies—drawing closer together before they coalescence into one giant black hole.

Led by University of Maryland alumnus Michael Koss (M.S. '07, Ph.D. '11, astronomy), a research scientist at Eureka Scientific, Inc., with contributions from UMD astronomers, the team surveyed hundreds of nearby galaxies using imagery from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble observations represent more than 20 years' worth of images from the telescope's lengthy archive. The team described their findings in a research paper published on November 8, 2018, in the journal Nature.

"Seeing the pairs of merging galaxy nuclei associated with these huge black holes so close together was pretty amazing," Koss said. "In our study, we see two galaxy nuclei right when the images were taken. You can't argue with it; it's a very 'clean' result, which doesn't rely on interpretation."

The high-resolution images also provide a close-up preview of a phenomenon that astronomers suspect was more common in the early universe, when galaxy mergers were more frequent. When the black holes finally do collide, they will unleash powerful energy in the form of gravitational waves—ripples in space-time recently detected for the first time by the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.

The images also presage what will likely happen in a few billion years, when our Milky Way galaxy merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Both galaxies host supermassive black holes at their center, which will eventually smash together and merge into one larger black hole.

More information: A population of luminous accreting black holes with hidden mergers, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0652-7 , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0652-7

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Creative Commons, the international non-profit devoted to expanding the range of creative works available legally, summarizes how the EU's proposed link tax would still harm Creative Commons licensors. The proposed Copyright Directive legislation entered the final rounds of negotiation back in September, retaining the problematic articles that raised hackles earlier this year, notably articles 11, 12, and 13. The Creative Commons discusses the current stat of article 11, known informally as the link tax.

Article 11 is ill-suited to address the challenges in supporting quality journalism, and it will further decrease competition and innovation in news delivery. Spain and Germany have already experimented with similar versions of this rule, and neither resulted in increased revenues for publishers. Instead, it likely decreased the visibility (and by extension, revenues) of published content—exactly the opposite of what was intended. Just last week a coalition of small- and medium-sized publishers sent a letter to the trilogue negotiators outlining how they will be harmed if Article 11 is adopted.

Not only is a link tax bad for business, it would undermine the intention of authors who wish to share without additional strings attached, such as creators who want to share works under open licenses. This could be especially harmful to Creative Commons licensors if it means that remuneration must be granted notwithstanding the terms of the CC license. This interpretation is not far-flung. As IGEL wrote last week, [...]

Previously on SN:
Secretive EU Copyright Negotiations Started Tuesday: Here's Where We Stand
EU Copyright Directive Passes; "Terrorist Content" Regulation Proposed; Astroturfing?
How The EU May Be About To Kill The Public Domain: Copyright Filters Takedown Beethoven
European Copyright Law Isn't Great. It Could Soon Get a Lot Worse

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS's Mail Scanning Service — Krebs on Security

A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that “Informed Delivery,” a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and made it easier for people to opt out. This week, the U.S. Secret Service issued an internal alert warning that many of its field offices have reported crooks are indeed using Informed Delivery to commit various identity theft and credit card fraud schemes.

The internal alert — sent by the Secret Service on Nov. 6 to its law enforcement partners nationwide — references a recent case in Michigan in which seven people were arrested for allegedly stealing credit cards from resident mailboxes after signing up as those victims at the USPS’s Web site.

According to the Secret Service alert, the accused used the Informed Delivery feature “to identify and intercept mail, and to further their identity theft fraud schemes.”

“Fraudsters were also observed on criminal forums discussing using the Informed Delivery service to surveil potential identity theft victims,” the Secret Service memo reads.

The USPS did not respond to repeated requests for comment over the past six days.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Hackers stole income, immigration and tax data in Healthcare.gov breach, government confirms

Hackers siphoned off thousands of Healthcare.gov applications by breaking into the accounts of brokers and agents tasked with helping customers sign up for healthcare plans.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a post buried on its website that the hackers obtained “inappropriate access” to a number of broker and agent accounts, which “engaged in excessive searching” of the government’s healthcare marketplace systems.

CMS didn’t say how the attackers gained access to the accounts, but said it shut off the affected accounts “immediately.”

In a letter sent to affected customers this week (and buried on the Healthcare.gov website), CMS disclosed that sensitive personal data — including partial Social Security numbers, immigration status and some tax information — may have been taken.

According to the letter, the data included:

• Name, date of birth, address, sex, and the last four digits of the Social Security number (SSN), if SSN was provided on the application;
• Other information provided on the application, including expected income, tax filing status, family relationships, whether the applicant is a citizen or an immigrant, immigration document types and numbers, employer name, whether the applicant was pregnant, and whether the applicant already had health insurance;
• Information provided by other federal agencies and data sources to confirm the information provided on the application, and whether the Marketplace asked the applicant for documents or explanations;
• The results of the application, including whether the applicant was eligible to enroll in a qualified health plan (QHP), and if eligible, the tax credit amount; and
• If the applicant enrolled, the name of the insurance plan, the premium, and dates of coverage.

But the government said that no bank account information — including credit card numbers, or diagnostic and treatment information — was taken.

Adding insult to injury

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Batteryless smart devices closer to reality

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have taken a huge step towards making smart devices that do not use batteries or require charging.

These battery-free objects, which feature an IP address for internet connectivity, are known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. If an IoT device can operate without a battery it lowers maintenance costs and allows the device to be placed in areas that are off the grid.

Many of these IoT devices have sensors in them to detect their environment, from a room's ambient temperature and light levels to sound and motion, but one of the biggest challenges is making these devices sustainable and battery-free.

Professor Omid Abari, Postdoctoral Fellow Ju Wang and Professor Srinivasan Keshav from Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science have found a way to hack radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, the ubiquitous squiggly ribbons of metal with a tiny chip found in various objects, and give the devices the ability to sense the environment.

"It's really easy to do," said Wang. "First, you remove the plastic cover from the RFID tag, then cut out a small section of the tag's antenna with scissors, then attach a sensor across the cut bits of the antenna to complete the circuit."

In their stock form, RFID tags provide only identification and location. It's the hack the research team has done -- cutting the tag's antenna and placing a sensing device across it -- that gives the tag the ability to sense its environment.

[...] The research paper by Wang, Abari and Keshav titled, Challenge: RFID Hacking for Fun and Profit-ACM MobiCom, appeared in the Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, October 29-November 2, 2018, New Delhi, India, 461- 70.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Better off... red?

Red Dead Redemption 2 has sold over 17 million copies worldwide

There was a time when westerns were a staple of American pop-culture -- a powerhouse genre for film, television, books and more. That trend kind of died in the 1980s, but maybe it's coming back. Take-Two Interactive, the company that owns Rockstar games reported in its quarterly financials that Red Dead Redemption 2 sold over 17 million copies in just over a week.

It took the original Red Dead Redemption 8 years to sell 15 million copies.

It's a shockingly huge number -- but if you've been keeping track, it might not be that big of a surprise. Just after the game's launch, the company revealed that it made over $725 million in its first few days, the largest opening weekend of any entertainment property ever, according to Rockstar. That's what happens when your game is one of the most anticipated, well-reviewed games in a decade.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NASA to support initial studies of privately funded Enceladus mission

NASA signed an agreement in September with a foundation to support initial studies of a privately funded mission to a potentially habitable moon of Saturn. The unfunded Space Act Agreement between NASA and the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, initiated with little public fanfare, covers NASA support for initial concept studies, known in NASA programmatic parlance as "Pre-Phase A," for a mission to the moon Enceladus, an icy world believed to have a subsurface ocean of liquid water and plumes that eject that water through the surface into space.

The agreement, the seven-page document posted on a NASA website states, "shall be for the purpose of cooperating on the Breakthrough Pre-Phase A activities for Breakthrough's Enceladus Mission." That includes supporting a series of reviews that leads up to what NASA calls Key Decision Point (KDP) A, "to determine progress to Phase A, for further formation of the Enceladus Mission's concept and technology development."

[...] Most of the study work would be done by Breakthrough. NASA, under the agreement, would use "reasonable efforts" to offer scientific and technical consulting for the study, including expertise in a range of scientific fields and in planetary projection. NASA will also advise "in the development of Phase A plans for a life signature mission to Enceladus." The agreement between NASA and Breakthrough involves no exchange of funds. NASA estimates its cost of carrying out its responsibilities under the agreement to be $72,384.

The agreement, first reported by New Scientist, offers few details about the proposed mission itself. A companion document for the agreement notes that the foundation's Breakthrough Watch program "seeks to evaluate near-term missions to objects in the Solar System, including Enceladus," that would search for signs of life there. "The Enceladus Mission is considering novel low-cost approaches, one of which uses solar sail technology to flyby the moon of Saturn to collect scientific data.

However, foundation officials have publicly discussed their interest in an Enceladus mission for a year. "We formed a little workshop around this idea," said Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire who funds the foundation, at an event in Seattle in November 2017. "Can we design a low-cost privately-funded mission to Enceladus, which can be launched relatively soon and that can look more thoroughly at those plumes to try to see what's going on there?"

Also at Space.com.

Previously: Yuri Milner Considering Privately Funded Mission to Enceladus

Related: Underground Ocean on Enceladus May be Close to the Surface
Hydrogen Emitted by Enceladus, More Evidence of Plumes at Europa
Could a Dedicated Mission to Enceladus Detect Microbial Life There?
How the Cassini Mission Led a 'Paradigm Shift' in Search for Alien Life
Porous Core Could be Keeping Enceladus Warm
Complex Organic Molecules Found on Enceladus

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sony Releases Quad-Layer 128 GB BD-R XL Media

Sony is about to start selling the industry's first 128 GB write-once BD-R XL optical media. The discs will also be the first quad-layer BDXL media formally aimed at consumers, but bringing benefits to professionals that use BDXL today.

Although the general BDXL specifications were announced back in 2010 for multi-layered write-once discs with 25 GB and 33.4 GB layers, only triple-layer BDXL discs with a 100 GB capacity (generally aimed at broadcasting, medical, and document imaging industries) have been made available so far. By contrast, quad-layer 128 GB media has never seen the light of day until now.

As it turns out, increasing the per-layer capacity of Blu-ray discs (BDs) to 33.4 GB via a technology called MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) was not a big problem, and most of today's BD players and optical drives support the BDXL standard. However, increasing the layer count to four while ensuring a broad compatibility, signal quality across four layers, yields, and some other factors slow downed release of 128 GB BDXL essentially by eight years.

Related: Ultra HD Blu-Ray Specification Completed

Original Submission

takyon writes:

SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Certified to Launch NASA's Most Precious Science Missions

SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket can now launch NASA's most expensive and highest-priority science missions. NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP) has certified the two-stage Falcon 9 as a "Category 3" rocket, SpaceX representatives announced Thursday (Nov. 8).

[...] The LSP certification ladder only goes up to Category 3, which is reserved for the most dependable launchers. These rockets are expected to have a demonstrated reliability of 90 to 95 percent, according to LSP officials. For comparison, Category 2 vehicles — the level attained by the Falcon 9 in 2015 — are expected to ace their missions 80 to 90 percent of the time.

Only Category 3 rockets can launch the priciest, most important, most complex NASA missions — projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars rover Curiosity and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Hubble launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in April of 1990, Curiosity flew atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November of 2011 and Webb will ride an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket in March 2021.)

Also at NASASpaceflight.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers create 'bionic mushroom' that produces electricity

Scientists outlined in a study published Wednesday a "bionic mushroom" capable of producing its own electricity. To do this, researchers used cyanobacteria, a bacteria with a blue-green color that creates its energy through photosynthesis, like plants.

Researchers at the Stevens Institute for Technology said the microbes have been known in the bioengineering community to create electricity, but don't last as long because the artificial surfaces used to host the bacteria can't keep it thriving long enough. For their study, Manu Mannoor, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the institute, and postdoctorate fellow Sudeep Joshi tried a button mushroom.

[...] To create the "bionic mushroom," researchers used a 3D printer to create two types of electronic ink patterns, one containing the bacteria, and a second containing graphene nanoribbons to collect the current. Those patterns were placed on the mushroom's cap. [...] The mushroom was able to create a current of about 65 nanoAmps. Although the mushroom isn't strong enough to power a device, researchers say several of them could build up enough electrical current to light up an LED.

Also at Discover Magazine, BBC, and The Independent.

Bacterial Nanobionics via 3D Printing (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02642) (DX)

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Washington Post is reporting that the Center for Disease Control's director is warning that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak may not be containable. The ongoing conflicts in the region might ensure that the disease becomes entrenched instead of coming under control. If it becomes endemic to the province then it will become impossible to trace contacts, stop transmission chains, and contain the outbreak. Apparently 60% to 80% of the newly-confirmed cases have no known epidemiological link to prior cases, indicating loss of control and fewer options for prevention or treatment. High level political attention is becoming needed at this point for there to be a solution.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Recently declassified documents suggest that in August 1972, a massive, high-velocity coronal mass ejection caused many sea mines to detonate unexpectedly. A new look is taken at the incident, taking into account more of what is known about the solar activity at the time.

The extreme space weather events of early August 1972 had significant impact on the US Navy, which have not been widely reported. These effects, long buried in the Vietnam War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972. This event occurred near the end of the Vietnam War. The US Navy attributed the dramatic event to 'magnetic perturbations of solar storms.' In researching these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐ grid disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in Southeast Asia late on 4 August likely resulted from propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth. The activity fits the description of a Carrington‐class storm minus the low latitude aurora reported in 1859. We provide insight into the solar, geophysical and military circumstances of this extraordinary situation. In our view this storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand challenge for the space weather community, as it provides space‐age terrestrial observations of what was likely a Carrington‐class storm.

Given that nearly everything is almost fully dependent on electronics and those same electronics are connected to several large networks of copper wire which will act as antennas, what will we do now to mitigate the damage so we are more ready when a similar event occurs again?

From
Space Weather : On the Little‐Known Consequences of the 4 August 1972 Ultra‐Fast Coronal Mass Ejecta: Facts, Commentary and Call to Action
Science Alert : A Solar Storm Detonated Dozens of US Sea Mines, Declassified Navy Documents Reveal

Original Submission