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Hackers are utilizing code from a Python clone of Microsoft’s venerable Minesweeper game to hide malicious scripts in attacks on European and US financial organizations.

Ukraine’s CSIRT-NBU and CERT-UA attribute the attacks to a threat actor tracked as ‘UAC-0188,’ who is using the legitimate code to hide Python scripts that download and install the SuperOps RMM.

Superops RMM is a legitimate remote management software that gives remote actors direct access to the compromised systems.

One of the largest banks in the world says a data breach has exposed customer and employee information.

In a statement, Santander says it’s aware of “unauthorized access” to a third-party database containing information on an undisclosed number of customers and employees.

The bank, which has $1.8 trillion in total assets and operates in ten markets across Europe and the Americas, says customers of Santander Chile, Spain and Uruguay are affected.

Retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration lead to photoreceptor death and loss of visual perception. Despite recent progress, restorative technologies for photoreceptor degeneration remain largely unavailable. Here, we describe a novel optogenetic visual prosthesis (FlexLED) based on a combination of a thin-film retinal display and optogenetic activation of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). The FlexLED implant is a 30 µm thin, flexible, wireless µLED display with 8,192 pixels, each with an emission area of 66 µm2. The display is affixed to the retinal surface, and the electronics package is mounted under the conjunctiva in the form factor of a conventional glaucoma drainage implant. In a rabbit model of photoreceptor degeneration, optical stimulation of the retina using the FlexLED elicits activity in visual cortex. This technology is readily scalable to hundreds of thousands of pixels, providing a route towards an implantable optogenetic visual prosthesis capable of generating vision by stimulating RGCs at near-cellular resolution.

### Competing Interest Statement.

All authors have a financial interest in Science Corporation.

Innovation For A Sustainable Global Energy Transformation — Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. — Director, Innovation and Technology Centre, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)


Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. is Director, Innovation and Technology Centre (IITC), of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA — https://www.irena.org/) where he oversees the Agency’s work on advising member countries in the area of technology status and roadmaps, energy planning, cost and markets and innovation policy frameworks.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is a leading global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation that serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, supports countries in their energy transitions, and provides state of the art data and analyses on technology, innovation, policy, finance and investment. IRENA drives the widespread adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy, including bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind energy in the pursuit of sustainable development, energy access, and energy security, for economic and social resilience and prosperity and a climate-proof future.

Blood transfusions save lives. In the US alone, people receive around 10 million units each year. But blood banks are always short in supply—especially when it comes to the “universal donor” type O.

Surprisingly, the gut microbiome may hold a solution for boosting universal blood supplies by chemically converting other blood types into the universal O.

Infusing the wrong blood type—say, type A to type B—triggers deadly immune reactions. Type O blood, however, is compatible with nearly everyone. It’s in especially high demand following hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other crises because doctors have to rapidly treat as many people as possible.

A quantum internet would essentially be unhackable. In the future, sensitive information—financial or national security data, for instance, as opposed to memes and cat pictures—would travel through such a network in parallel to a more traditional internet.

Of course, building and scaling systems for quantum communications is no easy task. Scientists have been steadily chipping away at the problem for years. A Harvard team recently took another noteworthy step in the right direction. In a paper published this week in Nature, the team says they’ve sent entangled photons between two quantum memory nodes 22 miles (35 kilometers) apart on existing fiber optic infrastructure under the busy streets of Boston.

“Showing that quantum network nodes can be entangled in the real-world environment of a very busy urban area is an important step toward practical networking between quantum computers,” Mikhail Lukin, who led the project and is a physics professor at Harvard, said in a press release.

An excellent discussion of the history, strategies, and future of new funding models for science wherein we can Ensure that scientific progress can flourish by removing financial and institutional obstacles for the world’s best scientists, so that they can fully pursue their curiosity and produce…


For those who sit between science and tech, it’s hard not to notice the proliferation of new initiatives launched in the last two years, aimed at making major improvements in the life sciences especially.

While I don’t have a science background, nor any personal relationship to the space (other than knowing and liking many of the folks involved), I became interested in learning why the space changed so suddenly, particularly from a philanthropic lens. Figuring out what worked in science can help us tackle other, similarly-shaped problems in the world.

To understand what happened, I looked at examples of science-related efforts in tech over the past ten years (roughly 2011–2021). I looked for patterns that would help me extrapolate the norms and values of the time, as well as inflection points that shifted those attitudes. I also interviewed a number of people in the space to help me fill in the gaps, as well as to understand what they value and what success looks like.

JPMorgan Chase says it has discovered a data breach affecting the personal information of nearly half a million customers.

New filings with the Office of the Maine Attorney General show the banking giant recently found a software issue that’s been active since August 26th, 2021.

The bug allowed unauthorized access to retirement plan records of 451,809 customers, which contain names, addresses, Social Security numbers and bank account numbers.

The AI of the future won’t just be a chatbot — it’ll be, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, outfitted with incredibly detailed information about its users.

In an interview with the MIT Technology Review, Altman suggested that AI should be working for its users harder than even the hardest-working human executive assistant, and would know absolutely everything about whoever is using it.

Speaking to the magazine between a series of events at Harvard, which were hosted in part by the venture capital firm Xfund, the OpenAI cofounder said that the best use of AI would be a “super-competent colleague that knows absolutely everything about my whole life, every email, every conversation I’ve ever had, but doesn’t feel like an extension.”

In a recent review published in the journal Nature Reviews Immunology, researchers discussed the limitations of current influenza vaccines and the potential for future vaccines to induce both T-cell responses and antibodies for enhanced protection. They examined the strategies to develop influenza vaccines with broad strain specificity and long-term efficacy, covering protection requirements, immune response evaluation, expected outcomes, and financial considerations.

Study: Opportunities and challenges for T cell-based influenza vaccines. Image Credit: CI Photos / Shutterstock.