Lifeboat Foundation

Using data from NASA’s JWST and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of U.S. National Science Foundation NOIRLab astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s ‘feast’ could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early Universe.

Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the Universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate, seen just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early Universe.

LID-568 was discovered by a cross-institutional team of astronomers led by International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh. They used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a sample of galaxies from the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray part of the spectrum, but are invisible in the optical and near-infrared. JWST’s unique infrared sensitivity allows it to detect these faint counterpart emissions.

The world’s first wooden satellite, built by Japanese researchers, was launched into space on Tuesday, in an early test of using timber in lunar and Mars exploration.

LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission, and later released into orbit about 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the Earth.

Named after the Latin word for “wood,” the palm-sized LignoSat is tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of the renewable material as humans explore living in space.

New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever observed. Photo: NASA.

New CRON#TRAP malware installs a Linux VM backdoor on Windows, evading antivirus, and allowing hidden control over compromised systems.

CISA alerts to active exploits in Palo Alto, CyberPanel, and Android, urging urgent fixes.

Nokia’s investigation of recent claims of a data breach found that the source code leaked on a hacker forum belongs to a third party and company and customer data has not been impacted.

The statement comes in response to threat actor IntelBroker earlier this week releasing data belonging to Nokia, allegedly stolen after breaching a third-party vendor’s server.

The hacker tried to sell the data, claiming that it includes SSH keys, source code, RSA keys, BitBucket logins, SMTP accounts, webhooks, and hardcoded credentials, but they decided to leak it after Nokia denied the breach.

Google has announced that multi-factor authentication (MFA) will be mandatory on all Cloud accounts by the end of 2025 to enhance security.

Google Cloud is a product designed for businesses, developers, and IT teams to build, deploy, and manage applications and infrastructure in the cloud.

The mandatory MFA rollout will affect both admins and any users with access to Google Cloud services but not general consumer Google accounts.

A new phishing campaign dubbed ‘CRON#TRAP’ infects Windows with a Linux virtual machine that contains a built-in backdoor to give stealthy access to corporate networks.

Using virtual machines to conduct attacks is nothing new, with ransomware gangs and cryptominers using them to stealthily perform malicious activity. However, threat actors commonly install these manually after they breach a network.

A new campaign spotted by Securonix researchers is instead using phishing emails to perform unattended installs of Linux virtual machines to breach and gain persistence on corporate networks.

An international team of researchers has provided a genetic diagnosis for 30 individuals whose condition was undiagnosed for years despite extensive clinical or genetic testing. The study, conducted by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, National University of Singapore and collaborating institutions worldwide, was published in Genetics in Medicine.

“The story of our findings began with one patient I saw in the clinic presenting an uncommon combination of problems,” said first and co-corresponding author Dr. Daniel Calame, instructor of pediatric neurology and developmental neurosciences at Baylor.

“The patient had severe developmental conditions, epilepsy and complete insensitivity to pain, which was very atypical. The condition had remained undiagnosed despite numerous tests conducted by geneticists and neurologists.”