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Man behind in-flight Evil Twin WiFi attacks gets 7 years in prison

A 44-year-old man was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison for operating an “evil twin” WiFi network to steal the data of unsuspecting travelers during flights and at various airports across Australia.

The man, an Australian national, was charged in July 2024 after Australian authorities had confiscated his equipment in April and confirmed that he was engaging in malicious activities during domestic flights and at airports in Perth, Melbourne, and Adelaide.

Specifically, the man was setting up an access point with a ‘WiFi Pineapple’ portable wireless access device and used the same name (SSID) for the rogue wireless network as the legitimate ones in airports.

GreyNoise launches free scanner to check if you’re part of a botnet

GreyNoise Labs has launched a free tool called GreyNoise IP Check that lets users check if their IP address has been observed in malicious scanning operations, like botnet and residential proxy networks.

The threat monitoring firm that tracks internet-wide activity via a global sensor network says this problem has grown significantly over the past year, with many users unknowingly helping malicious online activity.

“Over the past year, residential proxy networks have exploded and have been turning home internet connections into exit points for other people’s traffic,” explains GreyNoise.

Public GitLab repositories exposed more than 17,000 secrets

After scanning all 5.6 million public repositories on GitLab Cloud, a security engineer discovered more than 17,000 exposed secrets across over 2,800 unique domains.

Luke Marshall used the TruffleHog open-source tool to check the code in the repositories for sensitive credentials like API keys, passwords, and tokens.

The researcher previously scanned Bitbucket, where he found 6,212 secrets spread over 2.6 million repositories. He also checked the Common Crawl dataset that is used to train AI models, which exposed 12,000 valid secrets.

Nanoscale ‘Bragg gratings’ on photonic chips suppress noise in laser light

Researchers at the University of Sydney have cracked a long-standing problem in microchip-scale lasers by carving tiny “speed bumps” into the devices’ optical cavity in their quest to produce exceptionally “clean” light. This exquisitely narrow spectrum light could be used in future quantum computers, advanced navigation systems, ultra-fast communications networks and precision sensors.

In a new study published in APL Photonics, the team shows how to eliminate a critical source of noise in Brillouin lasers, a special class of light source known for its extraordinary purity, producing an ultranarrow spectrum that is almost a perfect single wavelength (or color) of light.

Light produced from sources like lightbulbs have a broad wavelength spectrum and are fine for everyday use but are too “noisy” for precision scientific purposes, where lasers are needed.

Drug combination sidesteps resistance in aggressive childhood neuroblastoma models

A discovery from Australian researchers could lead to better treatment for children with neuroblastoma, a cancer that currently claims 9 out of 10 young patients who experience recurrence. The team at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, found a drug combination that can bypass the cellular defenses these tumors develop that lead to relapse.

In findings made in animal models and published today in Science Advances, Associate Professor David Croucher and his team have shown that a drug already approved for other cancers can trigger neuroblastoma cell death through alternative pathways when the usual routes become blocked. This discovery could lead to better treatment strategies for children whose cancers have stopped responding to standard chemotherapy.

Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumor in children outside the brain, developing from nerve cells in the adrenal glands above the kidneys or along the spine, chest, abdomen or pelvis. It is typically diagnosed in children under 2 years old. While those with low-risk disease have excellent outcomes, around half of patients are diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma—an aggressive form where tumors have already spread. Of these high-risk patients, 15% don’t respond to initial treatment, and half of those who do respond will see their cancer return.

Superconductivity for addressing global challenges

High‑energy physics has always been one of the main drivers of progress in superconducting science and technology. None of the flagship accelerators that have shaped modern particle physics could have succeeded without large‑scale superconducting systems. CERN continues to lead the efforts in this field. Its next accelerator, the High‑Luminosity LHC, relies on high-grade superconductors that were not available in industry before they were developed for high-energy physics. Tomorrow’s colliders will require a new generation of high‑temperature superconductors (HTS) to be able to realise their research potential with improved energy efficiency and long‑term sustainability.

Beyond the physics field, next‑generation superconductors have the potential to reshape key technological sectors. Their ability to transmit electricity without resistance, generate intense magnetic fields and operate efficiently at high temperatures makes them suitable for applications in fields as diverse as healthcare, mobility, computing, novel fusion reactors, zero‑emission transport and quantum technologies. This wide range of applications shows that advances driven by fundamental physics can generate broad societal impact far beyond the laboratory.

The Catalysing Impact – Superconductivity for Global Challenges event seeks to accelerate the transition from science to societal applications. By bringing together top-level researchers, industry leaders, policymakers and investors, the event provides a structured meeting point for technical expertise and strategic financing. Its purpose is not simply to present progress but to build bridges across sectors, disciplines and funding landscapes in order to move superconducting technologies from early demonstrations to impactful applications.

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