Lifeboat Foundation

Rather than steal credentials or hold data for ransom, a recent campaign observed by Sophos prevents people from visiting sites that offer illegal downloads.

The objective of most malware is some kind of gain — financial or otherwise — for the attackers who use it. However, researchers recently observed a unique malware with a single intent: Blocking the infected computers from visiting websites dedicated to software piracy.

The malware (which SophosLabs principal researcher Andrew Brandt called “one of the strangest cases I’ve seen in a while”) works by modifying the HOSTS file on the infected system, in a “a crude but effective method to prevent a computer from being able to reach a web address,” he wrote in a report published Thursday.

Dual system could lead to compact facilities for particle physics and X-ray analysis.

Loyal founder Celine Halioua talks about the inspiration behind her journey into aging science and why dog longevity has relevance in humans.

A malware called Crackonosh infected 222000 PCs in order to mine $2 million worth of Monero cryptocurrency.

Cybersecurity experts reported the detection of at least four flaws in Dell SupportAsist’s BIOSConnect feature, the exploitation of which would allow threat actors to deploy remote code to affected devices. It should be noted that this software is preinstalled by default on most Dell computers running Windows systems, and BIOSConnect allows remote firmware update and some operating system recovery features.

This set of flaws received a score of 8.3÷10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scale, and its exploitation would allow privileged remote hackers on the target system to impersonate an official Dell service in order to take control of the operating system boot process and thus break any security controls enabled. So far no active exploitation attempts or a functional attack have been detected for the abuse of these flaws.

Continue reading “Vulnerabilities in Dell laptops’ software allow hackers to execute code remotely in millions of devices” »

Tardigrades have previously survived in the vacuum of space.

Indestructible water-dwelling creatures called tardigrades will be subject to a series of experiments at the International Space Station to reveal how they survive in extreme environments.

A massive maelstrom that raged in the universe’s youth could help scientists better understand how galaxies and their central black holes interact.

Most, if not all, galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole at their core. Our own Milky Way has one, for example — a behemoth known as Sagittarius A*, which is about as massive as 4.3 million suns.

Quick, accurate and easy-to-use, CRISPR-Cas9 has made genomic editing more efficient—but at the same time has made human germline editing much more feasible, erasing many of the ethical barriers erected to prevent scientists from editing the genes of heredity.

“The ethical debate about what is now called human gene editing has gone on for more than 50 years,” writes Dr. John H. Evans, co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego. “For nearly that entire time, there has been consensus that a moral divide exists between somatic and human germline editing.”

In an essay published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Evans contends that many of the potent bioethical arguments that once made germline editing a verboten concept, have begun to dissolve in the era of CRISPR.

Research led by Kent and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has resulted in the discovery of a new rare topological superconductor, LaPt₃P. This discovery may be of huge importance to the future operations of quantum computers.

Superconductors are vital materials able to conduct electricity without any resistance when cooled below a certain temperature, making them highly desirable in a society needing to reduce its energy consumption.

They manifest quantum properties on the scale of everyday objects, making them highly attractive candidates for building computers that use quantum physics to store data and perform computing operations, and can vastly outperform even the best supercomputers in certain tasks. As a result, there is an increasing demand from leading tech companies like Google, IBM and Microsoft to make quantum computers on an industrial scale using superconductors.