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Amateur Astronomer Discovers Long-Dead NASA Satellite Has Come Back To Life

schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: In his hunt to locate Zuma, an amateur astronomer has discovered that a long-dead NASA satellite, designed to study the magnetosphere, has come back to life. IMAGE went dead in 2005, and though NASA thought it might come back to life after experiencing a total eclipse in 2007 that would force a reboot, no evidence of life was seen then. It now appears that the satellite came to life sometime between then and 2018, and was chattering away at Earth waiting for a response. NASA is now looking at what it must do to take control of the spacecraft and resume science operations. Zuma is the secret U.S. government payload that was launched by SpaceX earlier this month and reportedly lost. As for why Scott Tilley — the amateur radio astronomer — decided to have a look for the present of secret military satellites, Ars Technica reports that he apparently does this semi-regularly as a hobby and, in this case, was inspired by the Zuma satellite. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amateur Astronomer Discovers Long-Dead NASA Satellite Has Come Back To Life

Crooks Created 28 Fake Ad Agencies To Disguise Massive Malvertising Campaign

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: A group of cyber-criminals created 28 fake ad agencies and bought over 1 billion ad views in 2017, which they used to deliver malicious ads that redirected unsuspecting users to tech support scams or sneaky pages peddling malware-laden software updates or software installers. The entire operation — codenamed Zirconium — appears to have started in February 2017, when the group started creating the fake ad agencies which later bought ad views from larger ad platforms. These fake ad agencies each had individual websites and even LinkedIn profiles for their fake CEOs. Their sole purpose was to interface with larger advertising platforms, appearing as legitimate businesses. Ad security company Confiant, the one who discovered this entire operation, says ads bought by this group reached 62% of ad-monetized websites on a weekly basis. All in all, Confiant believes that about 2.5 million users who’ve encountered Zirconium’s malicious ads were redirected to a malicious site, with 95% of the victims being based in the U.S. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Crooks Created 28 Fake Ad Agencies To Disguise Massive Malvertising Campaign

Now Even YouTube Serves Ads With CPU-draining Cryptocurrency Miners

YouTube was recently caught displaying ads that covertly leach off visitors’ CPUs and electricity to generate digital currency on behalf of anonymous attackers, it was widely reported. From a report: Word of the abusive ads started no later than Tuesday, as people took to social media sites to complain their antivirus programs were detecting cryptocurrency mining code when they visited YouTube. The warnings came even when people changed the browser they were using, and the warnings seemed to be limited to times when users were on YouTube. On Friday, researchers with antivirus provider Trend Micro said the ads helped drive a more than three-fold spike in Web miner detections. They said the attackers behind the ads were abusing Google’s DoubleClick ad platform to display them to YouTube visitors in select countries, including Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain. The ads contain JavaScript that mines the digital coin known as Monero. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Now Even YouTube Serves Ads With CPU-draining Cryptocurrency Miners

$500 Million Worth of Cryptocurrency Stolen From Japanese Exchange

Locke2005 shares a report from CNBC: Hackers stole several hundred million dollars’ worth of a lesser-known cryptocurrency from a major Japanese exchange Friday. Coincheck said that around 523 million of the exchange’s NEM coins were sent to another account around 3 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET Thursday), according to a Google translate of a Japanese transcript of the Friday press conference from Logmi. The exchange has about 6 percent of yen-bitcoin trading, ranking fourth by market share on CryptoCompare. The stolen NEM coins were worth about 58 billion yen at the time of detection, or roughly $534.8 million, according to the exchange. Coincheck subsequently restricted withdrawals of all currencies, including yen, and trading of cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Locke2005 adds, “That, my friends, is the prime reason why speculating in cryptocurrency is a bad idea!” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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$500 Million Worth of Cryptocurrency Stolen From Japanese Exchange

Washington Bill Makes It Illegal To Sell Gadgets Without Replaceable Batteries

Jason Koebler writes: A bill that would make it easier to fix your electronics is rapidly hurtling through the Washington state legislature. The bill’s ascent is fueled by Apple’s iPhone-throttling controversy, which has placed a renewed focus on the fact that our electronics have become increasingly difficult to repair. Starting in 2019, the bill would ban the sale of electronics that are designed “in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider. Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Washington Bill Makes It Illegal To Sell Gadgets Without Replaceable Batteries

Apple Prepares MacOS Users For Discontinuation of 32-Bit App Support

Last year, Apple announced that macOS High Sierra “will be the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without compromise.” Now, in the macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 beta, Apple is notifying users of the impending change, too. “To prepare for a future release of macOS in which 32-bit software will no longer run without compromise, starting in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, a user is notified on the launch of an app that depends on 32-bit software. The alert appears only once per app, ” Apple says in the beta release notes. Ars Technica reports: When users attempt to launch a 32-bit app in 10.13.4, it will still launch, but it will do so with a warning message notifying the user that the app will eventually not be compatible with the operating system unless it is updated. This follows the same approach that Apple took with iOS, which completed its sunset of 32-bit app support with iOS 11 last fall. Developers and users curious about how this will play out will be able to look at the similar process in iOS for context. On January 1 of this year, Apple stopped accepting 32-bit app submissions in the Mac App Store. This June, the company will also stop accepting updates for existing 32-bit applications. iOS followed a similar progression, with 32-bit app submissions ending in February of 2015 and acceptance of app updates for 32-bit apps ending in June of 2015. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Prepares MacOS Users For Discontinuation of 32-Bit App Support

Intel Plans To Release Chips That Have Built-in Meltdown and Spectre Protections Later This Year

Intel plans to release chips that have built-in protections against the Spectre and Meltdown attacks later this year, company CEO Brian Krzanich said during company’s quarterly earnings call this week. From a report: The company has “assigned some of our very best minds” to work on addressing the vulnerability that’s exploited by those attacks, Krzanich said on a conference call following Intel’s quarterly earnings announcement. That will result in “silicon-based” changes to the company’s future chips, he said. “We’ve been working around clock” to address the vulnerability and attacks, Krzanich said. But, he added, “we’re acutely aware we have more to do.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Plans To Release Chips That Have Built-in Meltdown and Spectre Protections Later This Year

Australian Birds of Prey Are Deliberately Setting Forests On Fire

An anonymous reader writes: If you’ve been counting the ways the Australian environment is trying to kill you, you can now add “arson” to the list. According to a six-year study published in The Journal of Ethnobiology, observers have confirmed what Aboriginal rangers have been observing for years: birds of prey routinely carry burning or smouldering sticks into dry grassy areas to scare small mammals into fleeing so they can be pack-hunted more effectively. This has implications for environmental management, since the best firebreak will not protect your controlled burn from a “firehawk” determined to breach it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wine 3.0 Released

prisoninmate shares a report from Softpedia: The Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project has been updated today to version 3.0, a major release that ends 2017 in style for the open-source compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps and games on Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. Almost a year in the works, Wine 3.0 comes with amazing new features like an Android driver that lets users run Windows apps and games on Android-powered machines, Direct3D 11 support enabled by default for AMD Radeon and Intel GPUs, AES encryption support on macOS, Progman DDE support, and a task scheduler. In addition, Wine 3.0 introduces the ability to export registry entries with the reg.exe tool, adds various enhancements to the relay debugging and OLE data cache, as well as an extra layer of event support in MSHTML, Microsoft’s proprietary HTML layout engine for the Windows version of the Internet Explorer web browser. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 3.0 from WineHQ’s website. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meteor lights up southern Michigan

Enlarge / That’s no moon! Early last night local time, a meteor rocketed through the skies of Southern Michigan, giving local residents a dramatic (if brief) light show. it also generated an imperceptible thump, as the UG Geological Survey confirmed that there was a coincident magnitude 2.0 earthquake. The American Meteor Society has collected over 350 eyewitness accounts , which ranged from western Pennsylvania out to Illinois and Wisconsin. They were heavily concentrated over southern Michigan, notably around the Detroit area. A number of people have also posted videos of the fireball online; one of the better compilations is below. A compilation of several videos from Syracuse.com. The American Meteor Society estimates that the rock was relatively slow-moving at a sedate 45,000km an hour. Combined with its production of a large fireball, the researchers conclude it was probably a big rock. NASA’s meteorwatch Facebook page largely agrees and suggests that this probably means that pieces of the rock made it to Earth. If you were on the flight path, you might want to check your yard. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meteor lights up southern Michigan