Posts made by mlnews

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Rare black hole and neutron star collisions sighted twice in 10 days

Scientists have detected two collisions between a neutron star and a black hole in the space of 10 days
Researchers predicted that such collisions would occur, but did not know how often. The observations could mean that some ideas of how stars and galaxies form may need to be revised. Prof Vivien Raymond, from Cardiff University, told BBC News that the surprising results were fantastic. "We have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite our theories," he said effusively. "We have learned a bit of a lesson again. When we assume something we tend to be proved wrong after a while. So we have to keep our minds open and see what the Universe is telling us."

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Hackers exploited 0-day, not 2018 bug, to mass-wipe My Book Live devices

Western Digital removed code that would have prevented the wiping of petabytes of data.
Last week’s mass-wiping of Western Digital My Book Live storage devices involved the exploitation of not just one vulnerability but a second critical security bug that allowed hackers to remotely perform a factory reset without a password, an investigation shows. The vulnerability is remarkable because it made it trivial to wipe what is likely petabytes of user data. More notable still was that, according to the vulnerable code itself, a Western Digital developer actively removed code that required a valid user password before allowing factory resets to proceed.

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Clouds of Venus 'simply too dry' to support life

It's not possible for life to exist in the clouds of Venus.
It's simply too dry, says an international research team led from Queen's University Belfast, UK. Hopes had been raised last year that microbes might inhabit the Venusian atmosphere, given the presence there of the gas phosphine (PH3). It was suggested the concentration could not be explained by geological activity alone. But the new Belfast study puts a dampener on this idea. The team assessed what is known about conditions in the clouds, gathered by space probes, and then looked across the library of lifeforms on Earth to see if any known organisms could persist in that challenging environment. The clouds are mostly sulphuric acid with a tiny fraction of water.

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Google launches a new medical app—outside the United States

The dermatology AI app won approval for use in the EU but not with the FDA.
Billions of times each year, people turn to Google’s web search box for help figuring out what’s wrong with their skin. Now, Google is preparing to launch an app that uses image recognition algorithms to provide more expert and personalized help. A brief demo at the company’s developer conference last month showed the service suggesting several possible skin conditions based on uploaded photos.

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Google tracking cookies ban delayed until 2023

Google has delayed its plan to block third-party cookies from its Chrome internet browser.
Cookies track users' internet activity and allow digital publishers to target advertising. They are already blocked by a number of Google's rivals, including Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla. But critics say Google's ban forces ad sellers to go direct to the tech giant for this information instead - giving it an unfair advantage. This is because it plans to replace the system with another one of Google's own design, which it claims is better for privacy but still allows marketing. Its proposals are already under investigation by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

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On sale: $125,000 balloon trips to the edge of space

If you're trying to avoid airborne viruses, heading to a near vacuum might not be the worst idea.
A Florida company is planning to fly passengers to the edge of space in a high-tech version of a hot air balloon, with a pilot and up to eight travelers riding in a pressurized capsule suspended from an enormous blimp. Human space flight company Space Perspective is now taking reservations on its Spaceship Neptune for flights in early 2024, with tickets priced firmly in the once-in-a-lifetime bracket at $125,000 per person. The refundable reservation deposits are tiered, with higher down payments needed for Year One flights and decreasing for later bookings.

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Miami building collapse: 159 missing, officials say

The number of people listed as missing after the collapse of a 12-storey building in the US city of Miami has risen to 159, officials say.
Four people are known to have died. The mayor of Miami-Dade says they "still have hope" of finding survivors. Search teams working around the clock have reported hearing people banging beneath the debris. What caused the 40-year-old building to collapse early on Thursday morning remains unclear. At least 102 people have now been accounted for, but it is uncertain how many were in the building when it came down. Dozens of people have been evacuated from what is left of the structure.

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Is Windows 11 the beginning of the end for Skype?

Microsoft has officially announced Windows 11, its new operating system which will replace the current version over the next few years.
Among all the new features are two seemingly small but related things that jumped out. First - Microsoft Teams, the video-calling app which saw a boom during 2020's pandemic, will be integrated into Windows 11 by default. And second - Skype will not be, for the first time in years. That seems to suggest that Teams is the new favourite child, and many pundits think this is the beginning of the end for what was once the king of calling apps. "Looks like Microsoft is killing off Skype," wrote the Irish & Sun

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Hackers are using unknown user accounts to target Zyxel firewalls and VPNs

Authentication bypass attacks allow hackers to change breach network security.
Network device maker Zyxel is warning customers of active and ongoing attacks that are targeting a range of the company’s firewalls and other types of security appliances. In an email, the company said that targeted devices included security appliances that have remote management or SSL VPN enabled, namely in the USG/ZyWALL, USG FLEX, ATP, and VPN series running on-premise ZLD firmware. The language in the email is terse, but it appears to say that the attacks target devices that are exposed to the Internet. When the attackers succeed in accessing the device, the email further appears to say, the

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Dell SupportAssist bugs put over 30 million PCs at risk

Security researchers have found four major security vulnerabilities in the BIOSConnect feature of Dell SupportAssist, allowing attackers to remotely execute code within the BIOS of impacted devices.
According to Dell's website, the SupportAssist software is "preinstalled on most Dell devices running Windows operating system," while BIOSConnect provides remote firmware update and OS recovery features. The chain of flaws discovered by Eclypsium researchers comes with a CVSS base score of 8.3/10 and enables privileged remote attackers to impersonate Dell.com and take control of the target device's boot process to break OS-level security controls.

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Canada: Hundreds of unmarked graves found at residential school

An indigenous group in Canada says it has found hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan.
The Cowessess First Nation said on Wednesday that the discovery was "the most significantly substantial to date in Canada". However the group did not specify the exact number of graves found. It comes weeks after the remains of 215 children were found at a similar residential school in British Columbia. Such compulsory boarding schools were run by the Canadian government and religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth.

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The final years of John McAfee's controversial life

In 2012, the game appeared to be up for John McAfee.
After going on the run in Belize, he had been arrested in Guatemala after his neighbour was found dead. The police described him as a "person of interest" in the case. However, as in many situations in his life, he somehow managed to wiggle free. McAfee shot to fame in the 1980s, after launching an anti-virus software company he named after himself. His success brought with it money - but throughout his life, McAfee seemed almost as good at losing money as he was at generating it. In 2008, he had moved to Belize, where he ended up living next to man called Gregory Faull.

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Clues to how birds migrate using Earth's magnetic field

The mystery of how birds migrate long distances over land and sea is a step closer to being cracked.
By studying robins, scientists have found clues to how birds sense the Earth's magnetic field. Just as you might reach for a magnetic compass to find which way is north or south, birds are thought to have an in-built "living compass". A chemical in the eye that is sensitive to magnetism could be proof of this theory, according to a new study. Peter Hore, professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford, said it could be that birds can "see" the Earth's magnetic field, although we don't know that for sure.

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Ahoy, there’s malice in your repos—PyPI is the latest to be abused

Open source repositories can be vectors for badness, so look before you run.
Counterfeit packages downloaded roughly 5,000 times from the official Python repository contained secret code that installed cryptomining software on infected machines, a security researcher has found. The malicious packages, which were available on the PyPI repository, in many cases used names that mimicked those of legitimate and often widely used packages already available there, Ax Sharma, a researcher at security firm Sonatype reported. So-called typosquatting attacks succeed when targets accidentally mistype a name such as typing “mplatlib” or “maratlib” instead of the legitimate and popular package matplotlib.

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Turkmenistan's capital tops list of most expensive cities for expats

The capital of Turkmenistan in Central Asia has been named as the world's most expensive city for foreign workers.
Ashgabat, a city of about one million people, topped a 2021 cost-of-living survey by consultancy firm Mercer. The ranking puts Ashgabat above last year's priciest city, Hong Kong, which was placed second, followed by Beirut in Lebanon and Tokyo in Japan. The annual report ranks 209 cities based on the cost of expenses such as housing, transport and food. Mercer said it evaluated more than 200 goods and services for the report, which is designed to help companies and governments around the world determine how much they should pay expatriate employees.

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Monero emerges as crypto of choice for cybercriminals

Untraceable "privacy coin" is rising in popularity among ransomware gangs.
For cybercriminals looking to launder illicit gains, bitcoin has long been the payment method of choice. But another cryptocurrency is coming to the fore, promising to help make dirty money disappear without a trace. While bitcoin leaves a visible trail of transactions on its underlying blockchain, the niche “privacy coin” monero was designed to obscure the sender and receiver, as well as the amount exchanged. As a result, it has become an increasingly sought-after tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs, posing new problems for law enforcement. The rise of monero comes as authorities race to crack down on cyber crime in the wake of a series of audacious attacks, notably the hack on the Colonial Pipeline, a major petroleum artery supplying the US east coast.

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Covid: Vaccines running out in poorer nations, WHO says

A large number of poorer countries receiving Covid-19 vaccines through a global sharing scheme do not have enough doses to continue programmes, the World Health Organization has said.
WHO senior adviser Dr Bruce Aylward said the Covax programme had delivered 90 million doses to 131 countries. But he said this was nowhere near enough to protect populations from a virus still spreading worldwide. The shortages come as some nations in Africa see a third wave of infections. On Monday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called for an end to vaccine hoarding by wealthier countries as his government scrambled to curb a steep rise in cases. On a continental level, only 40 million doses have been administered so far in Africa - less than 2% of the population, Mr Ramaphosa said. To address this, he said his government was working with Covax to create a regional hub to produce more vaccines in South Africa.

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Even creepier COVID tracking: Google silently pushed app to users’ phones

Massachusetts launched a COVID tracking app, and uh, it was automatically installed?!
Over the weekend, Google and the state of Massachusetts managed to make creepy COVID tracking apps even creepier by automatically installing them on people's Android phones. Numerous reports on Reddit, Hacker News, and in-app reviews claim that "MassNotify," Massachusetts' COVID tracking app, silently installed on their Android device without user consent. Google gave the following statement to 9to5Google, and the company does not deny silently installing an app.

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Snapchat removes controversial speed filter

Snapchat is removing a feature that displays how fast a user is travelling when taking a picture or video footage.
Parent company Snap said it was because the speed filter was "barely used". But the company is being sued by the parents of two young men, who allege the filter encouraged their sons to drive at dangerous speeds and three deaths were due to "negligent design". Snap said it had already "disabled the filter at driving speeds", capping it at 35mph (56km/h), and added a warning. "Nothing is more important than the safety of our Snapchat community," a representative added.

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Mapping quest edges past 20% of global ocean floor

The quest to compile the definitive map of Earth's ocean floor has edged a little nearer to completion.
Modern measurements of the depth and shape of the seabed now encompass 20.6% of the total area under water. It's only a small increase from last year (19%); but like everyone else, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project has had cope with a pandemic. The extra 1.6% is an expanse of ocean bottom that equated to about half the size of the United States. The progress update on Seabed 2030 is released on World Hydrography Day.