Posts made by mlnews

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Council policies often inconsistent with climate goals

More than a third of English councils support policies that could increase carbon emissions despite having declared a "climate emergency", BBC research suggests.
Road building and airport expansion are among examples provided by 45 out of 121 questionnaire respondents who say they have passed climate motions. Environmentalists say the findings reveal "inconsistencies" in approach. Local leaders insist they are taking action but need more funding. Between March and June the BBC surveyed all 149 top tier councils in England, of which 136 responded. The government has committed to cutting greenhouse gases to almost zero by 2050 - this target is known as net zero. This means reducing emissions as far as possible, then balancing out any remaining releases by, for example, tree planting. The similar term of carbon neutrality refers to doing this for CO2 emissions rather than all greenhouse gases.

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SynAck ransomware gang releases decryption keys for old victims

The El_Cometa ransomware gang, formerly known as SynAck, has released today master decryption keys for the victims they infected between July 2017 and early 2021.
The keys have been verified as authentic by Michael Gillespie, a malware analyst at security firm Emsisoft and the creator of the ID-Ransomware service. Gillespie told The Record he was able to use the leaked decryption utilities and private keys to decrypt files from old SynAck attacks. The Record will not be making these keys generally available as the decryption process can be somewhat complicated for non-technical users, and former SynAck victims who may try to decrypt older data might end up damaging files even further. Instead, Gillespie said that Emsisoft would be developing its own decryption utility that will be safer and easier to use, which they will be releasing within the next few days.

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Accenture downplays ransomware attack as LockBit gang leaks corporate data

Fortune 500 company Accenture has fell victim to a ransomware attack but said today the incident did not impact its operations and has already restored affected systems from backups.
News of the attack became public earlier this morning when the company’s name was listed on the dark web blog of the LockBit ransomware cartel. The LockBit gang claimed it gained access to the company’s network and was preparing to leak files stolen from Accenture’s servers at 17:30:00 GMT. In an emailed statement, Accenture not only confirmed the attack but also greatly played down its impact.

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Wildfires: How are they linked to climate change?

Recent heatwaves and wildfires around the world have caused alarm - with warnings that parts of Europe and North America could be experiencing the worst fire season ever.
Parts of the western US have seen record-breaking temperatures this year, which - along with severe drought conditions - have triggered a series of major wildfires. So far this year in California, more than twice as many acres of land have been burned by wildfires compared with the five-year average. Dr Susan Prichard, from the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, says: "We now have the conflagrations in California that we feared, following the record-setting heatwaves.

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Google may cut pay of staff who work from home

Google employees in the US who opt to work from home permanently may get a pay cut.
The technology giant has developed a pay calculator that lets employees see the effects of working remotely or moving offices. Some remote employees, especially those with a long commute, could have their pay cut without changing address. Google has no plans at this time to implement the policy in the UK. Employees in many businesses have proved that working from home permanently is viable during the Covid pandemic. Many companies are looking ahead to how employees will work as the pandemic recedes, even as the US continues to battle the Delta variant of the disease.

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Today’s Firefox 91 release adds new site-wide cookie-clearing action

New features build on Total Cookie Protection, simplifying privacy management.
Mozilla's Firefox 91, released this morning, includes a new privacy management feature called Enhanced Cookie Clearing. The new feature allows users to manage all cookies and locally stored data generated by a particular website—regardless of whether they're cookies tagged to that site's domain or cookies placed from that site but belonging to a third-party domain, eg Facebook or Google.

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Greece fires: PM apologises as blazes rage on Evia island

Greece's prime minister has apologised for failures in tackling the wildfires tearing across the country.
Hundreds of firefighters have been battling huge blazes that have forced thousands of people to flee their homes and destroyed dozens of properties. "We may have done what was humanly possible, but in many cases it was not enough," Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. Thick smoke is still pouring off the island of Evia, north-east of Athens, which has been ablaze for a week. Dozens of homes and acres of forest have already been scorched to the ground in Evia, on the outskirts of the capital, and in other parts of Greece. Hundreds of residents have been ordered to leave the island to escape the fires, though some were determined to stay to defend their properties.

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New “Glowworm attack” recovers audio from devices’ power LEDs

A new class of passive TEMPEST attack converts LED output into intelligible audio.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have demonstrated a novel way to spy on electronic conversations. A new paper released today outlines a novel passive form of the TEMPEST attack called Glowworm, which converts minute fluctuations in the intensity of power LEDs on speakers and USB hubs back into the audio signals that caused those fluctuations. The Cyber@BGU team—consisting of Ben Nassi, Yaron Pirutin, Tomer Gator, Boris Zadov, and Professor Yuval Elovici—analyzed a broad array of widely used consumer devices including smart speakers, simple PC speakers, and USB hubs. The team found that the devices' power indicator LEDs were generally influenced perceptibly by audio signals fed through the attached speakers.

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Climate change: New report will highlight 'stark reality' of warming

UN researchers are set to publish their strongest statement yet on the science of climate change.
The report will likely detail significant changes to the world's oceans, ice caps and land in the coming decades. Due out on Monday, the report has been compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be their first global assessment on the science of global heating since 2013. It is expected the forthcoming Summary for Policymakers will be a key document for global leaders when they meet in November. The politicians are due to gather for a climate summit, known as COP26, in Glasgow.

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Spotify calls off plans to support AirPlay 2, frustrating iPhone users

It's not a surprise to iOS users, but it's still a disappointment.
iPhone users have been asking for Spotify to add AirPlay 2 support for ages, but yesterday Spotify told users they shouldn't expect the feature to be added any time soon. AirPlay 2 was added to iOS more than three years ago, and users have been asking for Spotify to support it for many months. It offers lower latency, multi-room support, and Siri integration. Apple provides ways for developers to connect experiences to it, and sometimes works directly with prominent app developers who are seeking to implement it. Many other major audio apps on the iPhone support it. AirPlay 2 has become available in several non-Apple products too, like recent TVs from manufactures such as Samsung and LG.

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Google+ class action starts paying out $2.15 for G+ privacy violations

Google exposed the private data of 52 million users in 2018 and got sued.
Who remembers the sudden and dramatic death of Google+? Google's Facebook competitor and "social backbone" was effectively dead inside the company around 2014, but Google let the failed service hang around for years in maintenance mode while the company spun off standalone products. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google+ had exposed the private data of "hundreds of thousands of users" for years, that Google knew about the problem, and that the company opted not to disclose the data leak for fear of regulatory scrutiny. In the wake of the report, Google was forced to acknowledge the data leak, and the company admitted that the "private" data of 500,000 accounts actually wasn't private. Since nobody worked on Google+ anymore, Google's "fix" for the bug was to close Google+ entirely. Then the lawsuits started.

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Floods: Research shows millions more at risk of flooding

A new study shows that the percentage of the global population at risk from flooding has risen by almost a quarter since the year 2000.
Satellite images were used to document the rise, which is far greater than had been predicted by computer models. The analysis shows that migration and a growing number of flood events are behind the rapid increase. By 2030, millions more will experience increased flooding due to climate and demographic change, the authors say. Flooding is the environmental disaster that impacts more people than any other, say researchers. That view has echoed around the world in recent weeks, with huge inundations destroying lives and property.

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Blizzard Entertainment president steps down

Blizzard Entertainment president J Allen Brack has "stepped down", the World of Warcraft and Call of Duty game-maker says.
Parent company Activision Blizzard said Mr Brack was "leaving the company to pursue new opportunities". California is suing the company, alleging a workplace culture of sexism and harassment. Activision Blizzard denies this allegation and has called the legal action "disgraceful and unacceptable". Many Activision Blizzard staff walked out in protest against the company's culture and response to the allegations.

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Boeing delays rerun of Starliner space capsule test

The American Boeing company is attempting this week to run another test flight of its new astronaut capsule.
The CST-100 Starliner will launch from Florida at some point to showcase how it can ferry crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS). It will be the second test flight, and conducted with no people aboard. The previous demonstration in 2019 encountered software problems that very nearly caused the loss of the capsule. The Starliner will ride to orbit on an Atlas-5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Controllers had been targeting Tuesday for the launch but scrubbed the countdown with two-and-a-half hours left on the clock, to allow for investigation of technical issues related to the capsule's propulsion system.

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Trusted platform module security defeated in 30 minutes, no soldering required

Sometimes, locking down a laptop with the latest defenses isn't enough.
Let’s say you’re a large company that has just shipped an employee a brand-new replacement laptop. And let’s say it comes preconfigured to use all the latest best security practices, including full-disk encryption using a trusted platform module, password-protected BIOS settings, UEFI SecureBoot, and virtually all other recommendations from the National Security Agency and NIST for locking down federal computer systems. And let’s say an attacker manages to intercept the machine. Can the attacker use it to hack your network?

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Boeing set for re-run of Starliner space capsule test

The American Boeing company is about to run another demonstration mission of its new astronaut capsule.
The CST-100 Starliner is set to launch from Florida to showcase how it can ferry crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS). It will be the second test flight, and conducted with no people aboard. A similar demonstration run in 2019, encountered software problems that very nearly resulted in the loss of the capsule. The Starliner will ride to orbit on an Atlas-5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Lift-off is timed for 13:20 local time (17:20 GMT; 18:20 BST).

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Twitter works with news sites to tackle disinformation

Twitter will collaborate with two of the largest international news providers, Reuters and the Associated Press, to debunk disinformation on its messaging site.
The news agencies will help Twitter give more context and background information on events which create a high volume of tweets. Twitter hopes this will counteract the spread of misleading information. There has been renewed pressure to remove false content from the platform. Twitter said the partnership will enable it to ensure accurate and credible information is rapidly available "when facts are in dispute". "Rather than waiting until something goes viral, Twitter will contextualize developing discourse at pace with or in anticipation of the public conversation," Twitter said.

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New WireGuardNT shatters throughput ceilings on Windows

Adventurous users can try the new implementation now by adding a registry key.
The WireGuard VPN project announced a major milestone for its Windows users today—an all-new, kernel-mode implementation of the VPN protocol called WireGuardNT. The new implementation allows for massively improved throughput on 10Gbps LAN connections—and on many WI-Fi connections, as well. The original implementation of WireGuard on Windows uses wireguard-go—a userspace implementation of WireGuard written in Google's Go programming language. Wireguard-go is then tied to a virtual network device, the majority of which also lives in userspace. Donenfeld didn't like tap-windows, the virtual network interface provided by the OpenVPN project—so he implemented his own replacement from scratch, called Wintun.

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Ofcom appoints online safety head to take on big tech

Regulator Ofcom has announced Anna-Sophie Harling will be its online safety head, dealing with how the tech giants regulate harmful speech.
She will be in charge of implementing the Online Safety Bill, due to come into effect later this year if approved by Parliament. Ofcom will be able to fine tech firms that fail to remove offending content up to 10% of their global revenue. But one expert said this would require "bold leadership". Ms Harling is currently managing director for Europe at NewsGuard, which audits online publishers for accuracy. "I'm really excited to be joining Ofcom's online-safety team," she said. "Legislation will enable us to introduce meaningful transparency where it has been lacking and empower Ofcom to hold platforms to account. "I can't wait to get started."

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Instagram makes under-16s' accounts private by default

Instagram has made new under-16s' accounts private by default so only approved followers can see posts and "like" or comment.
Tests showed only one in five opted for a public account when the private setting was the default, it said. And existing account holders would be sent a notification "highlighting the benefits" of switching to private. But Instagram also said it was pushing ahead with new apps for under-13s, despite a backlash from some groups. "The reality is that they are already online and, with no foolproof way to stop people from misrepresenting their age, we want to build experiences designed specifically for them, managed by parents and guardians," parent company Facebook said.