researchers – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse

Enlarge / Code in Tuesday’s attack, shown on the left, was altered to permanently destroy hard drives. (credit: Matt Suiche ) Tuesday’s massive outbreak of malware that shut down computers around the world has been almost universally blamed on ransomware, which by definition seeks to make money by unlocking data held hostage only if victims pay a hefty fee. Now, some researchers are drawing an even bleaker assessment—that the malware was a wiper with the objective of permanently destroying hard drives. Initially, researchers said the malware was a new version of the Petya ransomware that first struck in early 2016 . Later, researchers said it was a new, never-before-seen ransomware package that mimicked some of Petya’s behaviors. With more time to analyze the malware, researchers on Wednesday are highlighting some curious behavior for a piece of malware that was nearly perfect in almost all other respects: its code is so aggressive that it’s impossible for victims to recover their data. In other words, the researchers said, the payload delivered in Tuesday’s outbreak wasn’t ransomware at all. Instead, its true objective was to permanently destroy as many hard drives as possible on infected networks, in much the way the Shamoon disk wiper left a wake of destruction in Saudi Arabia. Some researchers have said Shamoon is likely the work of developers sponsored by an as-yet unidentified country. Researchers analyzing Tuesday’s malware—alternatively dubbed PetyaWrap, NotPetya, and ExPetr—are speculating the ransom note left behind in Tuesday’s attack was, in fact, a hoax intended to capitalize on media interest sparked by last month’s massive WCry outbreak . Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Trans fat bans link to fewer heart attacks, deaths—and they’re going national

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Scott Olson ) Banishing trans fats from foods is linked to reductions in the number of heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths in the years after the bans are implemented, according to data from cities and counties in New York that have made the cut. After three years, the areas banning trans fats from eateries seemed to have an extra 6.2 percent reduction in heart attacks and strokes compared with those that didn’t, researchers report in JAMA Cardiology . Last year, other researchers reported in the Journal of Health Economics that the New York bans appeared to cut deaths from cardiovascular disease by 4.5 percent —that is, they spared about 13 lives from cardiovascular deaths per 100,000 people each year. While the decade of bans that have gone into effect in the state offer “natural experiments” on how cutting out trans fat may affect health, the results back up a slew of older studies—animal, controlled trial, and observational studies—that found harms of trans fats, plus benefits of ousting them from people’s diets. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Trans fat bans link to fewer heart attacks, deaths—and they’re going national

Snail venom provides a new way to treat chronic pain

The Conus regius’ venom is bad news for its prey, and it’s been proven harmful to humans as well. For instance, a 2009 clinical case describes a diver who had trouble moving his arm for 12 hours after an attack. However, scientists from the University of Utah see hope in the ocean dweller’s powerful venom. In fact, research suggests it could be used to develop a new treatment for chronic pain. This could mean a viable alternative to opioids , which are widely abused in the US. New York officials reported the number of deaths related to Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, and other narcotic medications in the state was 1, 227 in 2013 , nearly four times the amount in 2004. These drugs are addictive because they overstimulate the brain’s reward system with dopamine, which leads to chemical dependence. However, a compound isolated from the venom, Rg1A, works differently, according to The University of Utah . The newly discovered compound blocks a type of pain pathway receptor known as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR). This is a non-opioid pathway, meaning that pain relief can be achieved without habit-forming amounts of narcotics. In tests, rodents were treated with chemotherapy drugs, which made them very sensitive to cold and touch. Some of the rats were injected with the compound, and unlike their unmedicated peers, didn’t feel pain. The effects proved to be long-lasting, too. The compound passed through the rats’ bodies in about four hours, but the researchers found that it continued to dull pain a full three days after the injection. This has J. Michael McIntosh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah Health Sciences, optimistic about Rg1A’s potential not to just treat pain, but to prevent it. “Once chronic pain has developed, it is difficult to treat, ” he said . “This compound offers a potential new pathway to prevent pain from developing in the first place and offer a new therapy to patients who have run out of options.” Current pain-relief drugs work primarily on opioid-based pathways and aren’t effective enough to truly alleviate chronic pain, the university notes. These developments make it possible to treat chronic pain by targeting it through different means. Assuming human testing goes well, we could see the use of narcotics drop and the rise of pain-free patients rise. Source: The University of Utah

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Snail venom provides a new way to treat chronic pain

Scientists make battery that runs on air and carbon dioxide

Researchers at Penn State University have potentially come up with yet another way we could create energy from all that nasty carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere. They’ve developed an inexpensive flow cell battery that uses mostly water solutions containing either dissolved CO2 or dissolved normal air — the technical name for the dissolving process is called sparging, just FYI. Because the liquids contain different concentrations of CO2, they have different pH levels, and it’s this imbalance that generates electricity. In a flow cell battery, two liquids are separated by a membrane that doesn’t allow them to mix, but does permit the flow of ions. As ions are exchanged between the denser CO2 solution and normal air solution, the voltage changes at the manganese oxide electrodes in either tank. This stimulates the flow of electrons between the two connected electrodes and voilà : electricity. When the ion concentrations have normalized, you can effectively recharge the battery by refilling each tank with the opposite solution, reversing the flow of electrons. The Penn State scientists were able to do this over 50 times before seeing a drop in performance. Using CO2 in a flow cell battery isn’t an entirely new idea, but this version has an average power density of 0.82 W/m2 — nearly 200 times higher than anything developed previously, according to the researchers. Other CO2-based fuel cell systems are capable of much more, but they are also much more complicated, using other energy dense fuels and requiring high temperatures to operate. Penn State’s battery, on the other hand, works at room temperature and uses inexpensive materials and processes. Even so, the team admit it may not be economically viable to make use of their research on a large scale just yet. The dream, though, would be to integrate these batteries into fossil fuel power stations, repurposing their CO2 emissions to make even more energy. While more work needs to be done to improve performance and viability, anything that can make light of a bad (and worsening) situation can only be a good thing. Via: Phys.org Source: Environmental Science & Technology Letters

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Scientists make battery that runs on air and carbon dioxide

Mac malware is still crude, but it’s slowly catching up to its Windows rivals

Enlarge (credit: Patrick Wardle ) Malicious Microsoft Word documents that abuse macros have long been the bane of Windows users. Now, security researchers have found what may be the first such real-world attack to infect Macs. The attack was found in a Word file titled “U.S. Allies and Rivals Digest Trump’s Victory – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.” When Mac users open the document in a Word application configured to allow macros and ignore a warning, an embedded macro automatically: checks to make sure the LittleSnitch security firewall isn’t running downloads an encrypted payload from hxxps://www.securitychecking.org:443/index.asp decrypts the payload using a hard-coded key and executes the payload The code contained in the macro is written in the Python programming language. It was taken almost verbatim from EmPyre , an open-source exploit framework for Macs. By the time the researchers found the booby-trapped document, the securitychecking.org was no longer serving the payload, so it wasn’t possible to know precisely what it did. But the Empyre component the macro borrowed allowed for persistent infections that contained a wide range of capabilities, including monitoring webcams, stealing passwords and encryption keys stored in the keychain, and accessing browsing histories. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mac malware is still crude, but it’s slowly catching up to its Windows rivals

Surgical robot makes highly precise eye injection possible

For the first time ever, a team of eye surgeons were able to inject a thrombolytic drug directly into a patient’s retinal vein to dissolve a blood clot. It was a success despite the fact that the vein is as thin as human hair thanks to a surgical robot developed by researchers from KU Leuven , a university in Belgium. The condition they treated is called retinal vein occlusion, and it leads to reduced eyesight and blindness. At the moment, doctors can only suppress its effects with monthly eye injections, because the retinal vein itself is only around 0.1 millimeter wide. It’s just much too thin for manual injections when the drug has to be administered for 10 minutes straight. Professor Peter Stalmans, an eye surgeon at University Hospitals Leuven, said: “The current treatment for retinal vein occlusion costs society €32.000 per eye. This is a high price tag, considering that you’re only treating the side effects and that there is little more you can do than avoid reducing eyesight. The robotic device finally enables us to treat the cause of the thrombosis in the retina. I look forward to what is next: if we succeed, we will literally be able to make blind people see again.” To address the issue, the researchers created a robot that can help a surgeon insert the needle precisely and then hold it perfectly still. They also designed the 0.03 millimeter needle, which is three times thinner than human hair, needed to inject the drug into the tiny vein. According to the university, the method successfully dissolved the blood clot and the patient is now doing well. However, it’ll take some time before everyone else who has the condition can go through the same treatment: the surgery was merely part of the first phase of the method’s clinical trial. The surgeons have to replicate the procedure’s success on other patients and then study its effects in the trial’s second phase. Source: KU Leuven

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Surgical robot makes highly precise eye injection possible

Dutch scientists’ artificial leaf can create medicine anywhere

Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to concoct medicine anywhere the sun shines, even if it’s on another planet? A team of Dutch scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology have developed an artificial leaf-like device that could make that happen. The researchers, inspired by plants that can make their own food through photosynthesis , used materials that can match leaves’ capability to capture and store sunlight for later use. These materials are called luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), which have special light-sensitive molecules that can capture huge amounts of incoming light. The team designed a device that looks like a leaf by incorporating thin, microchannels mimicking veins in a silicon rubber LSC. By pumping liquids into those channels, their molecules can get into contact with the sunlight absorbed by the LSC. The energy is intense enough to trigger chemical reactions. According to the researchers, the device’s chemical production was 40 percent higher than the rate demonstrated by similar experiments without LSC. “Using a reactor like this means you can make drugs anywhere, in principle, whether malaria drugs in the jungle or paracetamol on Mars, ” lead researcher Dr. Timothy Noël explained. “All you need is sunlight and this mini-factory.” Source: Eindhoven University of Technology

Scientists put mouse embryos in suspended animation for a month

A team of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco only wanted to slow down mice embryos’ cell growth in the lab. Instead, they managed to completely pause their development, putting the blastocysts (very early embryos) in suspended animation for a month. What’s more, they found that the process can put stem cells derived from the blastocysts in suspended animation, as well. Okay, let’s face it: that doesn’t sound nearly as cool as putting humans in suspended animation. But their finding still has huge implications for various fields of medicine. Doctors could develop a way to suspend embryos for IVF and scientists could find a method to slow down aging, among other possibilities. Helps that the researchers were able to prove that the embryos can develop normally even after a pause in their growth. Team member Ramalho-Santos from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research said: “It was completely surprising. We were standing around in the tissue culture room, scratching our heads, and saying wow, what do we make of this? To put it in perspective, mouse pregnancies only last about 20 days, so the 30-day-old ‘paused’ embryos we were seeing would have been pups approaching weaning already if they’d been allowed to develop normally.” So, what exactly did the team do that led to their finding? They used a drug that inhibited the activities of a protein called mTOR, which regulates different cellular processes. By inhibiting the protein, they also inhibit the cells’ activities. In the future, the researchers want to explore mTOR inhibitors’ capability to pause stem cells’ activities in the late stages of their development, which could be used to repair or replace organs. And since other studies already showed that mTOR inhibitors can extend the lives of mice, the researchers want to explore their possible uses in aging research. Source: University of California, San Francisco

Hackers hijack a Philips Hue lights with a drone

Surprise! The Internet of Things is a security nightmare. Anyone who was online a few weeks ago can attest to that. The massive internet blackout was caused by connected devices , and new research from white-hat hackers expounds upon those types of vulnerabilities. The target? Philips Hue smart lightbulbs. While they’ve been hacked in the past , Philips was quick to point out that it happening in a real-world situation would be pretty difficult. Digital intruders would need to already be on your home network with a computer of their own — the company claimed that directly attacking the lightbulbs wasn’t exactly feasible. But this new attack doesn’t require that sort of access. In fact, all it takes is tricking the bulbs into accepting a nefarious firmware update. By exploiting a weakness in the Touchlink aspect of the ZigBee Light Link system ( again! ), the hackers were able to bypass the built-in safeguards against remote access. From there, they “extracted the global AES-CCM key” that the manufacturer uses to encrypt and authenticate new firmware, the researchers write (PDF). “The malicious firmware can disable additional downloads, and thus any effect caused by the worm, blackout, constant flickering, etc.) will be permanent.” What’s more, the attack is a worm, and can jump from connected device to connected device through the air. It could potentially knock out an entire city with just one infected bulb at the root “within minutes.” “There is no other method of reprogramming these devices without full disassemble (which is not feasible). Any old stock would also need to be recalled, as any devices with vulnerable firmware can be infected as soon as the power is applied.” The result is that the hackers were able to turn lights on and off both from a van driving by a house and a drone flying outside an office building. For the home, the team was 70 meters (229.7 feet) away and caused lights to go on and off individually. The office building houses a few security companies including Oracle, and was hacked from 350 meters (1, 148 feet; about a quarter of a mile), and once under control, the lights started signaling “S.O.S.” in Morse code. “We used only readily available equipment costing a few hundred dollars, and managed to find this key without seeing any actual updates.” Not terrifying at all, right? The researchers say that they’ve contacted Philips and included all the details needed for a fix. Philips has confirmed the weaknesses and issued firmware updates to hopefully guard against this ever happening. Via: New York Times Source: Eyalro (1) , (2) (PDF)

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Hackers hijack a Philips Hue lights with a drone

Alan Turing’s groundbreaking synthesizer music restored

Alan Turing is known for a few small achievements, like helping end World War II , laying the groundwork for modern computers and developing the ” Turing test ” for machine intelligence. You may not be aware, however, that he paved the way for synthesizers and electronica by inventing the first computer-generated musical tones. A pair of researchers from the University of Cantebury have now restored the first-ever recording made from Turing’s “synthesizer.” Turing figured that if he rapidly played clicking sounds at set intervals, the listener would here them as distinct tones corresponding to musical notes. For instance, playing the click on every fourth cycle of a computers’ CPU produces a “C” tone, exactly like a modern synthesizer. He tested that theory on his Manchester Mark I, one of the world’s first programmable computers. Instead of making music, he used the tones to indicate computing operations like completed tasks and memory overflow errors (meaning he also invented notification sounds). Turing knew that he could program songs on his “synth, ” but had no interest in doing it. Luckily, talented programmer and musician Christopher Strachey got his hands on the Manchester Mark II’s operating guide, which was, by the way, the world’s first computer manual. Using that, he coded God Save the Queen , the longest program ever at the time. The next morning, he played it back to surprised onlookers at the lab, including Turing, who was uncharacteristically thrilled, saying “good show.” The BBC recorded it later in 1951, along with two other songs: Baa Baa Black Sheep and Glenn Miller’s In the Mood . However, the researchers found that the notes had shifted in pitch because of the crude recording equipment used. The key to correcting it, as it turned out, was in the pitches that the computer couldn’t play. For instance, rather than playing a true G at 196 Hz, it could only do a decidedly sharp 198.41 Hz. Knowing that, the team adjusted the playback to match those frequencies. They also filtered out noises and used pitch-correction software to edit out the fluctuating “wobble” in the recording. The result is a clean version of the synthesizer, which sounds like a cross between a viola and electronic bagpipes. While the music isn’t great, it is a small way to “hear” the genius of Turing. Like Nicolas Tesla, he was far too big for his time and suffered greatly for it, committing suicide at the age of 41. Via: The Guardian Source: Sound and Vision Blog

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Alan Turing’s groundbreaking synthesizer music restored