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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

A malicious Chrome extension surreptitiously steals Ethereum keys and passwords:

A Google Chrome extension was caught injecting JavaScript code on web pages to steal passwords and private keys from cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency portals.

The extension is named Shitcoin Wallet (Chrome extension ID: ckkgmccefffnbbalkmbbgebbojjogffn), and was launched last month, on December 9.

According to an introductory blog post, Shitcoin Wallet lets users manage Ether (ETH) coins, but also Ethereum ERC20-based tokens -- tokens usually issued for ICOs (initial coin offerings).

Users can install the Chrome extension and manage ETH coins and ERC20 tokens from within their browser, or they can install a Windows desktop app, if they want to manage their funds from outside a browser's riskier environment.

However, the wallet app wasn't what it promised to be.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[UPDATE (20200107_023514 UTC): Launch went off smoothly and on time. Booster landed safely on the drone ship. Second stage is in proper orbit and currently in coast phase leading up to satellite deployment.]

With Monday night launch, SpaceX to become world's largest satellite operator:

In 2019 SpaceX launched two batches of 60 Starlink satellites—one experimental, and the second operational. On Monday, the company plans to add 60 more satellites with a nighttime launch of the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

If all goes to plan, this mission will be just the first of as many as 20 Starlink launches this year as SpaceX builds up a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit to provide global Internet service. SpaceX may begin to offer "bumpy" service by the middle of this year to some consumers.

Following this next launch, scheduled for 9:19pm ET Monday (02:19 UTC Tuesday), SpaceX will have a constellation of nearly 180 satellites in low-Earth orbit, each weighing a little more than 220kg. This will make the company simultaneously the world's largest private satellite operator (eclipsing Planet Labs), while also being the most active private launch company.

[...] Monday night's launch attempt will occur on a Falcon 9 first stage that has flown three times previously, in September 2018 (Telstar 18 VANTAGE), January 2019 (Iridium-8), and May 2019 (the first experimental Starlink mission). After launching, the first stage will land on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. Another vessel, "Ms. Tree," will attempt to recover a payload fairing half. The Starlink satellites themselves will deploy at 61 minutes into the mission, at an altitude of 290km.

A webcast of the mission should begin about 15 minutes prior to launch.

Link to the YouTube webcast.

Previously:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Astrophysicists Peeved As SpaceX's Starlink Sats Block Meteor Spotting
SpaceX's Starship Can Launch 400 Starlink Satellites at Once
Elon Musk Sends Tweet Via SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Broadband
SpaceX Requests Permission to Launch an Additional 30,000 Starlink Satellites, to a Total of 42,000+
Three of SpaceX's Starlink Satellites have Failed
Most of SpaceX's Starlink Internet Satellites are Already on Track
Third Time's the Charm! SpaceX Launch Good; Starlink Satellite Deployment Coming Up [Updated]
SpaceX's First Dedicated Starlink Launch Set for May; Amazon Hired SpaceX Execs for Project Kuiper
SpaceX Seeks Approval for 1 Million Starlink Ground Stations, Faces Pentagon Audit
U.S. Air Force Awards SpaceX $28.7 Million to Study Military Applications of Starlink
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Fired Managers and Employees in June to Shake Up Starlink Project
SpaceX Starlink Satellite Prototypes Include Packed, Flexible Solar Arrays

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

A quantum breakthrough brings a technique from astronomy to the nano-scale:

Researchers at Columbia University and University of California, San Diego, have introduced a novel "multi-messenger" approach to quantum physics that signifies a technological leap in how scientists can explore quantum materials.

The findings appear in a recent article published in Nature Materials, led by A. S. McLeod, postdoctoral researcher, Columbia Nano Initiative, with co-authors Dmitri Basov and A. J. Millis at Columbia and R.A. Averitt at UC San Diego.

"We have brought a technique from the inter-galactic scale down to the realm of the ultra-small," said Basov, Higgins Professor of Physics and Director of the Energy Frontier Research Center at Columbia. Equipped with multi-modal nanoscience tools we can now routinely go places no one thought would be possible as recently as five years ago."

The work was inspired by "multi-messenger" astrophysics, which emerged during the last decade as a revolutionary technique for the study of distant phenomena like black hole mergers. Simultaneous measurements from instruments, including infrared, optical, X-ray and gravitational-wave telescopes can, taken together, deliver a physical picture greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A 2017 report of the discovery of a particular kind of Majorana fermion—the chiral Majorana fermion, referred to as the “angel particle”—is likely a false alarm, according to new research. Majorana fermions are enigmatic particles that act as their own antiparticle and were first hypothesized to exist in 1937. They are of immense interest to physicists because their unique properties could allow them to be used in the construction of a topological quantum computer.

A team of physicists at Penn State and the University of Wurzburg in Germany led by Cui-Zu Chang, an assistant professor of physics at Penn State studied over three dozen devices similar to the one used to produce the angel particle in the 2017 report. They found that the feature that was claimed to be the manifestation of the angel particle was unlikely to be induced by the existence of the angel particle. A paper describing the research appears on January 3, 2020 in the journal Science.

“When the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana predicted the possibility of a new fundamental particle which is its own antiparticle, little could he have envisioned the long-lasting implications of his imaginative idea,” said Nitin Samarth, Downsbrough Department Head and professor of physics at Penn State. “Over 80 years after Majorana’s prediction, physicists continue to actively search for signatures of the still elusive “Majorana fermion” in diverse corners of the universe.”

Journal Reference:

Morteza Kayyalha, Di Xiao, Ruoxi Zhang, Jaeho Shin, Jue Jiang, Fei Wang, Yi-Fan Zhao, Run Xiao, Ling Zhang, Kajetan M. Fijalkowski, Pankaj Mandal, Martin Winnerlein, Charles Gould, Qi Li, Laurens W. Molenkamp, Moses H. W. Chan, Nitin Samarth, Cui-Zu Chang. Absence of evidence for chiral Majorana modes in quantum anomalous Hall-superconductor devices. Science, 2020; 367 (6473): 64 DOI: 10.1126/science.aax6361

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Insights into how the heart recovers after myocardial infarction (heart attack) can be obtained with a new radiotracer that targets fibroblast activity prior to it causing permanent damage. According to research published in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI-04 positron emission tomography (PET) can effectively image fibroblast activation after myocardial infarction, identifying a time window during which cardiac fibrosis can be prevented and the disease course altered.

After a heart attack, fibroblasts play an important role in tissue replacement, preserving the structural integrity of the heart. However, excessive fibrosis can lead to increased left ventricle stiffness and decreased cardiac contraction. As heart failure remains a major source of late morbidity and mortality after a heart attack, study authors sought to evaluate the feasibility of imaging activated fibroblasts after myocardial infarction using a novel ⁶⁸Ga-labeled fibroblast activation protein (FAP) inhibitor.

"We know that the temporospatial presence of activated fibroblasts in the injured myocardium predicts the quality of cardiac remodeling after a heart attack," noted Zohreh Varasteh, PhD, research fellow at Klinikum rechts der Isar der TUM in Munich, Germany. "Therefore, imaging of activated fibroblasts using ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI-04 PET may have significant diagnostic and prognostic value, which could aid in the clinical management of patients after myocardial infarction."

[...] "While preclinical development of potential anti-fibrotic approaches is far advanced, there has been little clinical validation due to the lack of sensitive and specific imaging technologies for assessing cardiac fibrosis progression or regression. In this regard, ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI-04 PET has emerged as an important tool for the detection of fibrotic processes in the efforts to improve heart failure therapy," Varasteh said.

Varasteh continued, "In the future, these advances in imaging may also be applied to other conditions associated with the activation of fibroblasts, such as hypertension, ischemic, dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies, cancer therapy-related cardiotoxicity, liver cirrhosis and pulmonary fibrosis."

Journal Reference:

Zohreh Varasteh, Sarajo Mohanta, Stephanie Robu, Miriam Braeuer, Yuanfang Li, Negar Omidvari, Geoffrey Topping, Ting Sun, Stephan G. Nekolla, Antonia Richter, Christian Weber, Andreas Habenicht, Uwe A. Haberkorn, Wolfgang A. Weber. Molecular Imaging of Fibroblast Activity After Myocardial Infarction Using a ⁶⁸Ga-Labeled Fibroblast Activation Protein Inhibitor, FAPI-04. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2019; 60 (12): 1743 DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.119.226993

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a quantum chemistry simulation benchmark to evaluate the performance of quantum devices and guide the development of applications for future quantum computers.

Their findings were published in npj Quantum Information.

[...] "We are currently running fairly simple scientific problems that represent the sort of problems we believe these systems will help us to solve in the future," said ORNL's Raphael Pooser, principal investigator of the Quantum Testbed Pathfinder project. "These benchmarks give us an idea of how future quantum systems will perform when tackling similar, though exponentially more complex, simulations."

Pooser and his colleagues calculated the bound state energy of alkali hydride molecules on 20-qubit IBM Tokyo and 16-qubit Rigetti Aspen processors. These molecules are simple and their energies well understood, allowing them to effectively test the performance of the quantum computer.

By tuning the quantum computer as a function of a few parameters, the team calculated these molecules' bound states with chemical accuracy, which was obtained using simulations on a classical computer. Of equal importance is the fact that the quantum calculations also included systematic error mitigation, illuminating the shortcomings in current quantum hardware.

[...] While the calculations were fairly simple compared to what is possible on leading classical systems such as ORNL's Summit, currently ranked as the world's most powerful computer, quantum chemistry, along with nuclear physics and quantum field theory, is considered a quantum "killer app." In other words, it is believed that as they evolve quantum computers will be able to more accurately and more efficiently perform a wide swathe of chemistry-related calculations better than any classical computer currently in operation, including Summit.

"The current benchmark is a first step towards a comprehensive suite of benchmarks and metrics that govern the performance of quantum processors for different science domains," said ORNL quantum chemist Jacek Jakowski. "We expect it to evolve with time as the quantum computing hardware improves. ORNL's vast expertise in domain sciences, computer science and high-performance computing make it the perfect venue for the creation of this benchmark suite."

Journal Reference:

Alexander J. McCaskey, Zachary P. Parks, Jacek Jakowski, Shirley V. Moore, Titus D. Morris, Travis S. Humble, Raphael C. Pooser. Quantum chemistry as a benchmark for near-term quantum computers. npj Quantum Information, 2019; 5 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41534-019-0209-0

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A now-former senior IT exec has admitted conning his employer out of $6m – by setting up a fake tech services biz that billed his bosses for bogus services.

US prosecutors announced on Friday that Hicham Kabbaj, 48, of Floral Park, Long Island, New York, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. He faces up to 20 years in the clink, though in all likelihood will get much less, and will be sentenced later this year by presiding federal district Judge Richard Berman.

"Today, Mr Kabbaj pled guilty to a serious felony because he chose to misuse his position of trust as a corporate executive to steal company funds for his own personal gain," said Jonathan Larson, the Internal Revenue Service special agent in charge of the case.

According to Uncle Sam's court filings [PDF], between August 2015 and May 2019, while in various roles that allowed him to handle IT purchasing for his unnamed employer, described as a "global internet company" based in Manhattan, Kabbaj funneled millions into his own pockets through phony tech purchases.

For what it's worth, between May 2015 and August 2019, a certain Hicham Kabbaj worked for Rakuten Marketing, a global online marketing outfit, in New York, in various IT-related roles including senior veep of technical operations and engineering, according to LinkedIn. Rakuten did not respond to a request to comment.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

One of the new chips in this year’s crop of iPhones is the U1; it provides Ultra Wideband (UWB) connectivity that, in conjunction with Internet of Things (IoT) technology, could offer a myriad of new services for enterprises and consumers.

As Apple puts it, UWB technology offers “spatial awareness" – the ability for your phone to recognize its surroundings and the objects in it. Essentially, one iPhone 11 user can point his or her phone at another and transfer a file or photo.

While the technology isn't new, Apple’s implementation marks the first time UWB has been used in a modern smartphone.

UWB is a short-range, wireless communication protocol that – like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – uses radio waves. But it differs substantially in that IT operates at a very high frequency. As its name denotes, it also uses a wide spectrum of several GHz. One way to think of it is as a radar that can continuously scan an entire room and precisely lock onto an object like a laser beam to discover its location and communicate data.

In the early 2000s, UWB saw limited use in military radars and covert communications and was used briefly as a form of medical imaging, such as remote heart monitoring systems; Its adoption lagged until recently when commercial interests began exploring potential uses.

Today, its primary purpose is expected to be location discovery and device ranging, according to Phil Solis, an IDC research director. While both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have been modified to allow greater accuracy in locating other devices and connecting to them, UWB is natively more precise, uses less power and, as production of UWB chips ramps up over time, holds the promise of a lower price point.

Samsung, Apple and Huawei, the world’s largest smartphone makers, are all involved in UWB projects including chip and antenna production, according to Solis. Apple, however, is the first to actually deploy it in a phone.

Samsung, along with Xiaomi, NXP, Sony, Bosch and others, are also a part of the FiRa (fine ranging) Consortium, which is working to grow the UWB ecosystem. That ecosystem is built atop the existing IEE 802.15.4/4x standard for low-data-rate wireless communication.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Novel dementia vaccine on track for human trials within two years:

A newly published study has described the successful results in mice of a novel vaccine designed to prevent neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers suggest this "dementia vaccine" is now ready for human trials, and if successful could become the "breakthrough of the next decade."

The new study, led by the Institute for Molecular Medicine and University of California, Irvine, describes the effect of a vaccine designed to generate antibodies that both prevent, and remove, the aggregation of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain. The accumulation of these two proteins is thought to be the primary pathological cause of neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The research revealed the vaccine led to significant decreases in both tau and amyloid accumulation in the brains of bigenic mice engineered to exhibit aggregations of these toxic proteins. Many prior failed Alzheimer's treatments over the past few years have focused individually on either amyloid or tau protein reductions, but growing evidence suggests a synergistic relationship between the two toxic proteins may be driving neurodegeneration. Hence the hypothesis a combination therapy may be the most effective way to prevent this kind of dementia.

This new treatment combines two vaccines, dubbed AV-1959R and AV-1980R, which are designed to respectively target amyloid and tau protein aggregations. The vaccine is formulated in a novel adjuvant called Advax, developed by a team of Australian researchers to enhance vaccine immunogenicity.

Advax has been developed by Nikolai Petrovsky, a scientist from Australia's Flinders University who told ABC News Australia the new formulation offers the potential to act as both a preventative vaccine against the development of neurodegeneration, and a curative treatment in subjects already suffering from a build-up of these toxic proteins.

[...] The new research was published in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Climate change hope for hydrogen fuel:

A tiny spark in the UK's hydrogen revolution has been lit – at a university campus near Stoke-on-Trent. Hydrogen fuel is a relatively green alternative to alternatives that produce greenhouse gases. The natural gas supply at Keele University is being blended with 20% hydrogen in a trial that's of national significance. Adding the hydrogen will reduce the amount of CO2 that's being produced through heating and cooking. Critics fear hydrogen will prove too expensive for mass usage, but supporters of the technology have high hopes.

But the only product of burning hydrogen is water.

As a fuel, hydrogen functions in much the same way as natural gas. So staff in the university canteen say cooking on the 20% hydrogen blend has made no difference to their cooking regime. The project – known as HyDeploy - is the UK's first live trial of hydrogen in a modern gas network. Keele was chosen because it has a private gas system. Its hydrogen is produced in an electrolyser - a device that splits water (H2O) into its constituents: hydrogen and oxygen. The machine is located in a glossy green shipping container in the corner of the university's sports field.

The gas distribution firm Cadent, which is leading the project, says that if a 20% blend were to be rolled out across Britain, it would reduce emissions of CO2 by six million tonnes - equivalent to taking 2.5 million cars off the road.

The hydrogen could be generated pollution-free by using surplus wind power at night to split water molecules using electrolysis.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

Ransomware Attackers Offer Holiday Discounts and Greetings:

As ransomware operators look at their organizations as a business, it is not surprising to see them offering discounts or season's greetings to their victims.

Such is the case with the Sodinokibi Ransomware (REvil) who MalwareHunterTeam noticed had changed their ransom note over the holidays to include a new message wishing the victims a "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays".

The REvil ransom note goes on to suggest that instead of being stressed over the holidays, victims should pay the ransom so that they "have a great opportunity to enter the new year, leaving all the bad in the outgoing year. I advise you to write to us as soon as possible and not waste your precious time that you can spend with your family."

I am not sure this will have much effect on getting a victim to pay, but it does add a psychological impact to those who have to deal with them during the holidays.

The Maze operators took it a step further with their holiday celebrations by offering a discount to victims.

In a message to BleepingComputer, the Maze operators stated that they were offering a 25% discount if victims paid between December 25th and December 31st.

"We give 25% discount from 25-th december til 31-th [sic] December (included) for those who pays in this period of time. Merry christmas."

It is not known if they applied this discount retroactively to all of their victims, contacted them via the chat service, or some other means.

As part of a "new year celebration", the Maze operators have also told BleepingComputer that they are discounting the City of Pensacola's ransom to $500,000 and will no longer share their documents.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Atlantic and Pacific oscillations lost in the noise:

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) do not appear to exist, according to a team of meteorologists who believe this has implications for both the validity of previous studies attributing past trends to these hypothetical natural oscillations and for the prospects of decade-scale climate predictability.

Using both observational data and climate model simulations, the researchers showed that there was no consistent evidence for decadal or longer-term internal oscillatory signals that could be differentiated from climatic noise—random year to year variation. The only verifiable oscillation is the well-known El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

"A distinct—40 to 50 year timescale—spectral peak that appears in global surface temperature observations appears to reflect the response of the climate system to a combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing rather than any intrinsic internal oscillation," the researchers report today (Jan. 3) in Nature Communications.

According to the researchers, if the Atlantic Multidecadal or Pacific Decadal oscillations existed, there would be evidence for their existence across the suite of current state-of-the-art climate model simulations.

"Given the current sophistication of climate models as seen in their ability to capture the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, we would expect to see consistent evidence for oscillations across a suite of climate models," said Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. "We found no such evidence."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

Clustering pattern of Azteca ant colonies may be due to a Turing mechanism:

There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks each day, from December 25 through January 5. Today: Azteca ant formations show evidence of Turing patterns.

Azteca ants build their nests in shade trees, and it's relatively common to find other nests in trees nearby. But these clusters of ant nests are often separated by large sections of shade trees where there are no nests at all. A December overview paper in BioScience by scientists at the University of Michigan argued that there is now substantial evidence that this unusual clustering is the result of self-organizing behavior of the ants—not external factors like temperature or moisture. In fact, the mechanism at work is strikingly similar to a process described by the late Alan Turing in a seminal 1952 paper.

Turing was attempting to understand how natural, nonrandom patterns emerge (like a zebra's stripes), and he focused on chemicals known as morphogens. He devised a mechanism involving the interaction between an activator chemical and an inhibitor chemical that diffuse throughout a system, much like gas atoms will do in an enclosed box. The BioScience paper draws an analogy to injecting a drop of black ink into a beaker of water. Normally this would stabilize a system: the water would gradually turn a uniform gray. But if the inhibitor diffuses at a faster rate than the activator, the process is destabilized. That mechanism will produce a so-called  "Turing pattern:" spots, stripes, or, when applied to an ecological system, clusters of ant nests.

The authors of the BioScience paper write:

The basic idea is that the activating chemical starts the reaction at a specific point in the space but begins its diffusion away from that point immediately... The repressive chemical is eventually produced by the reaction and cancels the effect of the activator but, because it diffuses at a rate that is greater than that of the activating chemical, it eventually occupies a space where the activator had not yet arrived, therefore canceling the effect of the activator at that point.

So you get spots, like on a leopard, or stripes, like on a tiger.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Big Tech will push deeper into finance this year:

Google plans to introduce consumer bank accounts later this year in collaboration with Citibank and a California-based credit union. The company wants to piggyback off the financial know-how of its partners, while providing the digital layer through Google Pay.

It's somewhat similar to a move from once[sic] of its Silicon Valley peers. In 2019, Apple debuted a credit card that [was] created in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Like Google, the company has left much of the financial legwork to its bank partner while designing the card itself and integrating it with its digital wallet app.

Though their products are different, both firms share something in common: they have no plans to become regulated financial institutions like Citi or Goldman. While Big Tech — a group of companies that includes Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple — will undoubtedly push deeper into finance this year, their progress in banking will be "more of a slow creep than big strides," said Sarah Kocianski, head of research at fintech consultancy 11:FS.

"The big tech firms will continue to add services that are peripheral to banking to their existing offerings, without going full-stack banking," she said. "The headache of getting, and maintaining, a banking license would likely be considered too big a risk for these companies. Instead, they will continue to operate with licensed partners."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

Popular U.S. Restaurant Owner Hit by Credit Card Stealing Malware:

Landry's, a U.S. restaurant chain and property owner has disclosed that they were infected with a point-of-sale (POS) malware that allowed attackers to steal customer's credit card information.

Landry's owns and operates over 600 restaurants, with 60 well-known brands such as Landry's Seafood, Chart House, Saltgrass Steak House, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Claim Jumper, Morton's The Steakhouse, McCormick & Schmick's, Mastro's Restaurant, Rainforest Cafe, Del Frisco's Grill, and many more.

In a "Notice of Data Breach", Landry's has disclosed that an unauthorized user was detected on their systems and after completing an investigation it was discovered that POS malware was present on their systems between March 13, 2019, and October 17, 2019. At some locations, the malware may have been installed as early as January 18, 2019.

This POS malware could have been used under "rare circumstances" to steal customer's credit card information including cardholder name, card number, expiration date, and internal verification code

"We are notifying customers of an incident that we recently identified and addressed involving payment cards that, in rare circumstances, appear to have been mistakenly swiped by waitstaff on devices used to enter kitchen and bar orders, which are different devices than the point-of-sale terminals used for payment processing. This notice explains the incident, measures we have taken, and some steps you can take in response."

Original Submission