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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

"The sun is more surprising than we knew," said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. "We thought we had this star figured out, but that's not the case."

Nisa, who will soon be joining [Michigan State University's] faculty, is the corresponding author of a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that details the discovery of the highest-energy light ever observed from the sun.

The international team behind the discovery also found that this type of light, known as gamma rays, is surprisingly bright. That is, there's more of it than scientists had previously anticipated.

Although the high-energy light doesn't reach the Earth's surface, these gamma rays create telltale signatures that were detected by Nisa and her colleagues working with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC.

[...] "We now have observational techniques that weren't possible a few years ago," said Nisa, who works in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Natural Science. "In this particular energy regime, other ground-based telescopes couldn't look at the sun because they only work at night," she said. "Ours operates 24/7."

[...] "After looking at six years' worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays," Nisa said. "When we first saw it, we were like, 'We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies.'"

[...] The gamma rays that Nisa and her colleagues observed had about 1 trillion electron volts, or 1 tera electron volt, abbreviated 1 TeV. Not only was this energy level surprising, but so was the fact that they were seeing so much of it.

[...] "This shows that HAWC is adding to our knowledge of our galaxy at the highest energies, and it's opening up questions about our very own sun," Nisa said. "It's making us see things in a different light. Literally."

Journal Reference:
A. Albert et al, Discovery of Gamma Rays from the Quiescent Sun with HAWC, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.051201)

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA hopes to launch a near-infrared laser transceiver to test a system that could one day be used to communicate with astronauts on Mars.

The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will head off into the void with Psyche, an asteroid-chasing probe that is scheduled to blast off on October 5. While they journey toward 16 Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid, the DSOC system will spend two years attempting to communicate via laser with two ground stations in Southern California.

NASA believes DSOC's near-infrared lasers can trounce the data transmission speeds achieved using radios.

"DSOC was designed to demonstrate 10 to 100 times the data-return capacity of state-of-the-art radio systems used in space today," enthused Abi Biswas, DSOC's project technologist working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "High-bandwidth laser communications for near-Earth orbit and for Moon-orbiting satellites have been proven, but deep space presents new challenges."

NASA's most recent Mars rover, Perseverance, can communicate with orbiters at two megabits per second. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can chat to Earth at between 0.5 to 4 megabits per second.

Improving those speeds by a factor of between 10 and 100 with lasers therefore has an obvious benefit – even if the pesky limit that is the speed of light means it won't allow synchronous comms with the Red Planet.

[...] "Every component of DSOC exhibits new technology – from the high-power uplink lasers to the pointing system on the transceiver's telescope and down to the exquisitely sensitive detectors that can count the single photons as they arrive," explained Bill Klipstein, the DSOC project manager at JPL. "The team even needed to develop new signal-processing techniques to squeeze information out of such weak signals transmitted over vast distances."

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fliptop writes:

A team of researchers from British universities has trained a deep learning model that can steal data from keyboard keystrokes recorded using a microphone with an accuracy of 95%:

When Zoom was used for training the sound classification algorithm, the prediction accuracy dropped to 93%, which is still dangerously high, and a record for that medium.

Such an attack severely affects the target's data security, as it could leak people's passwords, discussions, messages, or other sensitive information to malicious third parties.

Moreover, contrary to other side-channel attacks that require special conditions and are subject to data rate and distance limitations, acoustic attacks have become much simpler due to the abundance of microphone-bearing devices that can achieve high-quality audio captures.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Reference: Joshua Harrison, Ehsan Toreini, and Maryam Mehrnezhad, A Practical Deep Learning-Based Acoustic Side Channel Attack on Keyboards. arXiv:2308.01074v1

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evilcam writes:

Science Alert has a story on a paper suggesting the use of asteroids for space stations.

The basic idea of turning an asteroid into a rotating space habitat has existed for a while. Despite that, it's always seemed relatively far off regarding technologies, so the concept hasn't received much attention over the years.
...
David W. Jensen, a retired Technical Fellow at Rockwell Collins ... released a 65-page paper that details an easy-to-understand, relatively inexpensive, and feasible plan to turn an asteroid into a space habitat.
...
Dr. Jensen breaks the discussion into three main categories – asteroid selection, habitat style selection, and mission strategy to get there (i.e., what robots to use).
...
After a relatively in-depth selection process, Dr. Jensen decided on one in particular as a good candidate – Atira. This S-type asteroid has an entire class of asteroids named after it. Atira comes in at about a 4.8 km diameter and even has its own moon – a 1 km diameter asteroid that orbits it closely.
...
He eventually settled on a torus as the ideal habitat type and then dives into calculations about the overall station mass, how to support the inner wall with massive columns, and how to allocate floor space. All important, but how exactly would we build such a massive behemoth?
Self-replicating robots are Dr. Jensen's answer. The report's third section details a plan to utilize spider robots and a base station that can replicate themselves. He stresses the importance of only sending the most advanced technical components from Earth and using materials on the asteroid itself to build everything else, from rock grinders to solar panels.

The numbers seem wildly out to me but I'm not an expert by any stretch. Feels as feasible as living on Mars...

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/after-a-scare-nasas-mars-helicopter-safely-takes-to-the-skies-again/

By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA's intrepid Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet's dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot.

[...] Mission success for Ingenuity was completing five relatively short flights. However, since its first test flight in April 2021, the helicopter has exceeded all expectations by flying more than 50 different sorties across Mars and surviving long and dark winters.

[...] "Since the very first flight, we have included a program called 'LAND_NOW' that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered," Teddy Tzanetos, team lead emeritus for Ingenuity, said. "During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

US scientists responsible for a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough say they have repeated the feat—this time achieving a greater yield of energy.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory stunned the world in December when it announced it had carried out an experimental nuclear reaction that put out more energy than was put into it, a holy grail of science in the quest for unlimited, clean power to end the era of fossil fuels.

"We can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December 2022 experiment," public information officer Paul Rhien said Monday in an emailed statement, without disclosing specific figures.

He added the California lab planned to report the results at upcoming scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed publications.

[...] Nuclear fusion has been touted by its supporters as a clean, abundant and safe source of energy that could eventually allow humanity to break its dependence on coal, crude oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons driving a global climate crisis.

However, there is still a long way to go before fusion is viable on an industrial scale, providing power to homes and businesses.

[...] During December's experiment, the lab used 192 ultra-powerful lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy to a tiny capsule smaller than a pea containing isotopes of hydrogen. It produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output.

While the result was a net energy gain, 300 megajoules of energy was needed from the electrical grid to power the lasers.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Just because EV technology is rapidly advancing doesn't mean it's without its flaws. Electric vehicle adoption in the U.S. remains relatively low, and for a good reason — many of the biggest remaining problems are considered deal breakers by buyers and will need to be fully remedied before EVs become the default option for most people. The trouble is, solutions for these problems are not always straightforward, taking years of work and potentially billions of dollars to fix, and that's if they can be fixed at all.

Here are the most important issues that EV designers are still working to solve.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle facing the EV industry is the lack of accessible charging infrastructure available to drivers. America has had over 100 years to develop its network of gas stations, but if EVs are to become widely adopted, an equally comprehensive EV charging network needs to be developed within the space of the next decade. The government does recognize this, and in 2022, Congress passed a bill to fund 500,000 new electric vehicle chargers, with a focus on delivering infrastructure to more remote, rural parts of the country.

[...] A closely related problem to the insufficient charging infrastructure is range anxiety. Even though the longest-range EVs today can travel more than 300 miles on a single charge, a patchy charging network and the sometimes inconsistent range indicators on EVs can make longer trips a stressful experience. Most people, understandably, would rather not add any extra stress to their everyday lives and choose to dismiss buying an electric car altogether as a result.

[...] Even if EV chargers end up becoming as ubiquitous as gas stations, there's still the issue of the amount of time it takes to fully charge a car. A range of chargers are available for both home and public charging, with the fastest of those being able to deliver over 100 miles of range in 10-20 minutes, but that's still significantly slower than a gas station stop. Those top-spec Level 3 chargers can't be installed at home either. To make matters worse, not every EV supports the same level of fast charging, so depending on the model of your car, you might not be able to make use of those higher-speed chargers even if you have one nearby.

There's a transition in car computing hardware from roughly 100 little modules all over the car, each with a tiny amount of computing, to, "domain controllers" that each manage a lot of I/O using more powerful computing. MotorTrend gives an overview here, https://www.motortrend.com/features/software-defined-vehicle-hardware-domain-controller

A few of the dozen or so domains include:

Gateway
This central hub connects to the various domains, serving as a connection port for service and managing much of the data-privacy and cybersecurity functionality by demanding multi-factor authentication and other countermeasures that comprise a firewall against malware attacks and attempts to hack into vehicle controls or data. The gateway continuously monitors the various vulnerability fronts (USB ports, SD card slots, connectivity ports, etc. ).

Vehicle Experience
This domain informs and entertains the vehicle occupants, providing infotainment, augmented and virtual reality, onboard gaming or shopping, etc. Sound systems and screens are managed by this domain, often communicating with offboard entertainment providers via the connectivity domain.

Connectivity
This domain oversees data communication between the car and the cloud, the vehicle manufacturer, telematics systems (e.g., the various global-positioning satellite systems), the road infrastructure and other road users (aka V2X—vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. ), charging stations, home or office, and myriad other nodes on the global "internet of things." This communication can be via cellular networks, WiFi, Bluetooth, wired connections, and other means. This domain serves as the conduit for over-the-air updates of software and firmware.

Paraphrasing an auto technician training site (can't find reference now):
Mechanical problems are easy/fast to diagnose (they can be seen), but time-consuming / hard to fix.
Electrical/electronic problems are hard/slow to diagnose, but fast/easy to fix.

What are the chances that the car companies will give more than lip service to the questions of service/diagnosis for all this electronics?

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/lots-of-earth-mass-rogue-planets-could-be-found-by-nasas-roman-telescope/

Planets that go rogue orbit no star. They wander the vacuum of space alone, having been kicked out of their star systems by gravitational interactions with other planets and stars. Nobody really knows how many rogue planets could be out there, but that may change in a few years.

Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Osaka University in Japan have used the phenomenon of gravitational microlensing to estimate the number of rogue planets that could be revealed in the heart of the Milky Way. They analyzed data from the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) survey that searched for gravitational microlensing events from 2006 to 2014 to figure out how many more of these events we could expect to find with NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

[...] "Gravitational microlensing enables us to study a variety of objects with masses ranging from that of exoplanets to black holes," the researchers said in the first of two studies soon to be published in The Astronomical Journal. The second study can be found here.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://chipsandcheese.com/2023/08/04/sandy-bridge-setting-intels-modern-foundation/

Processor companies typically iterate off proven designs, and for good reason. Changing too many things at once introduces a lot of risk. A lot of changing parts makes it hard to get a good picture of overall performance, so it also makes tuning difficult. Pentium 4 and Bulldozer made clean breaks from prior architectures, and both were unsuccessful designs. But sometimes, making a clean break does pay off.

Sandy Bridge is one such case. It inherited architectural features from Intel's prior P6 and Netburst architectures, but can't be considered a member of either line. Unlike Netburst, Sandy Bridge was so successful that Intel's high performance cores to this day can trace their lineage to back to it. In the early 2010s, Sandy Bridge was so successful that Intel went completely unchallenged in the high end CPU market. And as a testament to the architecture's solid design, Sandy Bridge CPUs still deliver enough performance to remain usable across a range of everyday tasks.

Original Submission

fab23 writes:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/microsoft-signing-key-stolen-by-chinese.html

A bunch of networks, including US Government networks, have been hacked by the Chinese. The hackers used forged authentication tokens to access user email, using a stolen Microsoft Azure account consumer signing key. Congress wants answers. The phrase "negligent security practices" is being tossed about—and with good reason. Master signing keys are not supposed to be left around, waiting to be stolen.

Actually, two things went badly wrong here. The first is that Azure accepted an expired signing key, implying a vulnerability in whatever is supposed to check key validity. The second is that this key was supposed to remain in the the system's Hardware Security Module—and not be in software. This implies a really serious breach of good security practice. The fact that Microsoft has not been forthcoming about the details of what happened tell me that the details are really bad.

I believe this all traces back to SolarWinds. In addition to Russia inserting malware into a SolarWinds update, China used a different SolarWinds vulnerability to break into networks. We know that Russia accessed Microsoft source code in that attack. I have heard from informed government officials that China used their SolarWinds vulnerability to break into Microsoft and access source code, including Azure's.

I think we are grossly underestimating the long-term results of the SolarWinds attacks. That backdoored update was downloaded by over 14,000 networks worldwide. Organizations patched their networks, but not before Russia—and others—used the vulnerability to enter those networks. And once someone is in a network, it's really hard to be sure that you've kicked them out.

Sophisticated threat actors are realizing that stealing source code of infrastructure providers, and then combing that code for vulnerabilities, is an excellent way to break into organizations who use those infrastructure providers. Attackers like Russia and China—and presumably the US as well—are prioritizing going after those providers.

upstart writes:

NASA back in touch with Voyager 2 after 'interstellar shout':

NASA has succeeded in re-establishing full contact with Voyager 2 by using its highest-power transmitter to send an "interstellar shout" that righted the distant probe's antenna orientation, the space agency said Friday.

Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as a beacon of humanity to the wider universe, it is currently more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from our planet—well beyond the solar system.

A series of planned commands sent to the spaceship on July 21 mistakenly caused the antenna to point two degrees away from Earth, compromising its ability to send and receive signals and endangering its mission.

The situation was not expected to be resolved until at least October 15 when Voyager 2 was scheduled to carry out an automated realignment maneuver.

But on Tuesday, engineers enlisted the help of multiple Earth observatories that form the Deep Space Network (DSN) to detect a carrier or "heartbeat" wave from Voyager 2, though the signal was still too faint to read the data it carried.

In a new update on Friday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built and operates the probe, said it had succeeded in a longshot effort to send instructions that righted the craft.

"The Deep Space Network used the highest-power transmitter to send the command (the 100-kw S-band uplink from the Canberra site) and timed it to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft," Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told AFP.

This so-called "interstellar shout" required 18.5 hours traveling at light speed to reach Voyager, and it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked, JPL said in a statement.

The probe began returning science and telemetry data at 12:29 am Eastern Time on August 4, "indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory," added JPL.

Previously: NASA Mistakenly Severs Communication to Voyager 2

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Pirates hack superyachts' cybersecurity

Most modern marine vessels are heavily equipped with technology, from GPS and navigation systems to electronic chart displays and information systems (ECDIS). The arrival of this new technology has sailed superyachts into dangerous waters with a new type of pirate.

Owning a superyacht is a luxury for the world's financial elite due to the exorbitant cost of buying and maintaining one. High-tech superyachts with wealthy owners create the perfect combination for bounty-hungry hacking pirates.

[...] Cyber security expert Naveen Hemanna explains how the rise of digital banking and cryptocurrencies helps fuel this form of crime. He told Euronews, "The pirates need not be on the boat. It's all virtual warfare, which is happening because your wealth is also not physical. It's virtual, so you don't really need to have a physical presence to get that money out".

Cyber threats to yachts have increased since COVID, proving that it's not plain sailing for yacht owners in the modern world. However, the future of marine vessels is becoming more sustainable and eco-friendly for the waters they are sailing in.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Most Popular Meteor Shower Of The Year Peaks Next Week:

When NASA says a celestial event is noteworthy, you know it should be spectacular.

That's certainly the case with the Perseid meteor shower, which NASA calls "the best meteor shower of the year," and is correspondingly the "most popular meteor shower," according to the American Meteor Society (AMS).

Although the Perseid meteor shower is visible this year from July 14–September 1, it is expected to peak on August 12 and early on August 13. Stargazers can expect to see up to 100 meteors per hour traveling at 37 miles per second, NASA notes.

"With swift and bright meteors, Perseids frequently leave long 'wakes' of light and color behind them as they streak through Earth's atmosphere," NASA explains. "Perseids are also known for their fireballs, which are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak."

Comets, which originate far outside the orbit of the outermost planets, have elliptical orbits around the Sun. For perspective, since they can be miles in diameter, NASA notes that they are about the "size of a small town."

Comets are essentially a giant "dirty snowball" made of frozen gasses with embedded rock and dust particles, NASA continues.

As comets near the Sun during their orbit, they warm, freeing bits of rock and dust that are then left behind in what can be thought of as a trail of debris. Every year, when Earth passes through these trails of rock and dust on its own orbit around the Sun, the debris particles collide with Earth's atmosphere.

When this happens, the particles heat up to temperatures of around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, creating streaks across the sky, Space.com explains. Those streaks, or shooting stars, stop abruptly when the intense heat evaporates most meteors.

The fragments of space debris that collide with Earth's atmosphere to create the Perseid meteor shower each summer were left in the wake of a comet named 109P/Swift-Tuttle. The comet has a unique name because it was discovered in 1862 independently by both Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle, NASA explains.

Swift-Tuttle is a large comet with a nucleus that is 16 miles wide. Amazingly, it takes 133 years for it to orbit the Sun.

Although meteor showers are caused by comet debris colliding with Earth's atmosphere, they are named for their radiant — where they appear to come from in the night sky.

The Perseid meteor shower gets its name because its meteors appear to come from the constellation Perseus, named for the famed Greek hero. Perseus not only slew Medusa the Gorgon who had snakes as hair, he also rescued his future wife Andromeda from a sea monster sent by Poseidon to destroy the coast and land of Ethiopia.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://computer.rip/2023-08-07-STIRred-AND-SHAKEN.html

In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of pre-planning, perhaps spurred by boredom, I looked through the schedule to see what's in store in the world of telephony. There is a workshop on SS7, of course [1], plenty of content on cellular, but as far as I see nothing on the biggest topic in telecom security: STIR/SHAKEN.

I can venture a guess as to why: STIR/SHAKEN is boring. So here we go!

The Nature of Circuit Switching

Understanding today's robocalling problem requires starting a long time ago. Taking you all the way back to the invention of the telephone would be a little gratuitous, but it is useful to start our discussion with the introduction of direct distance dialing in 1951. In that year, the first long-distance call was completed based only on the customer dialing a number. Over the following decades direct distance dialing became more common and fewer telephone users had to speak to an operator to have a long-distance call established. Today, it's universal.

Handling dial calls over long distance trunks is a bit complicated, though. For local calls, handling was relatively simple. The other customer was connected to the same exchange that you were, so the exchange just needed to be able to detect your dialing and select the correct local loop corresponding to the number you dialed. Step-by-step (SxS) switches have been handling this problem since the turn of the 20th century. For long distance calls, though, the recipient will not be on the same switch---they'll be on a foreign exchange.

Original Submission