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Earth May Not Be a Cosmic Fluke, New Simulations Suggest

Solar system simulations starting from varied initial conditions suggest that Earth-like planets can emerge naturally from planet formation.

Computer simulations of planetary systems can now begin from thousands of different starting conditions, allowing researchers to explore how worlds might emerge without assuming the final outcome. Over the past three decades, these models have advanced from relatively simple approximations to far more sophisticated simulations.

At the recent Origins 2026 conference in Paris, Nader Haghighipour presented simulations designed to reconstruct how our solar system may have formed without building its familiar planetary arrangement into the model from the outset.

Lava-Covered Planets Are Defying a Key Rule of Planetary Science

Researchers developed a model showing how lava-covered planets close to their stars can hold onto their atmospheres, which could help guide the search for life beyond our solar system.

Some planets orbit so close to their stars that intense radiation should strip away their atmospheres. Yet several of these scorching, lava-covered worlds still retain thick gaseous envelopes, presenting a challenge to a framework scientists use to predict which rocky planets can hold onto their air.

Stanford researchers now propose an explanation. Their model, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that molten surfaces can regulate how quickly gases escape from a planet’s interior. By slowing that release, lava can allow atmospheric replenishment to keep pace with losses caused by stellar radiation, preserving an atmosphere for billions of years.

Scientists Discover Exercise Can Match One Key Benefit of Sleep for the Brain

One sleepless night can blur the brain, but just 20 minutes of exercise or a well-timed nap may help new memories survive for days.

In a McGill University-led study, participants who exercised for 20 minutes or slept for 90 minutes after prolonged wakefulness performed about 22 percent better on a delayed memory test than those who did neither. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggest that two very different interventions can partially protect memory when adequate sleep is temporarily out of reach.

“Sleep loss affects nearly every aspect of how we think and function, but many people can’t simply stop what they’re doing and get more sleep,” said senior author Marc Roig, a professor in McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. “Our findings show that even a brief bout of exercise may help preserve one of our most important cognitive abilities.”

Four Spy Groups Used the Same Chrome and Windows Exploit Kit Within a Week

Multiple espionage-motivated threat activity clusters have been found deploying a previously undocumented exploit kit called BlueMoon that chains together multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome.

The first in-the-wild use of BlueMoon has been attributed to the China-aligned state-sponsored group tracked as APT31 (aka Bronze Vinewood, Judgement Panda, JungleBamboo, PerplexedGoblin, RedBravo, TA412, Tide Castle, and Violet Typhoon) on August 28, 2026.

“Within days, several other espionage-motivated clusters began using BlueMoon, the majority of which have a suspected China nexus,” Proofpoint said in a report published today. “However, BlueMoon may not be exclusive to China-aligned actors, as some usage remains unattributed and there are also potentially more actors using the exploit kit.”

Chrome V8 ZeroDay Exploited in the Wild Enables Code Execution Inside Sandbox

“Out-of-bounds write in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 153.0.8010.36 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page,” reads a description of the flaw on the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD).

Security researcher Jihyeon Jeong of Compsec Lab, Seoul National University, has been acknowledged for discovering and reporting the flaw on August 6, 2026. The researcher received a $2,500 bug bounty reward for responsible disclosure.

Google acknowledged it is “aware that an exploit for CVE-2026–87491 exists in the wild,” but has not disclosed any additional specific information related to how it’s being weaponized in real-world attacks and who is behind them.

US says Chinese firms extracted billions of tokens from frontier AI models

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies say that six Chinese AI companies conducted industrial-scale distillation attacks on American frontier AI models since at least late 2024.

A joint advisory from CISA, NSA, and the FBI states that DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens through millions of requests from frontier AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI.

The agencies assess that the scale and sophistication of the operations indicate Chinese government awareness, mentioning that this approach is likely a core development strategy for the offending firms.

New Microsoft Defender ‘ShieldCrash’ zero-day grants SYSTEM access

An anonymous security researcher known as Nightmare Eclipse has released a new Microsoft Defender zero-day exploit named “ShieldCrash” right after Microsoft rolled out its September 2026 Patch Tuesday security updates.

ShieldCrash is described as a bypass for the ShieldBreak Defender privilege escalation flaw patched on Thursday, which itself bypassed RoguePlanet, another Defender flaw disclosed in June and patched by Microsoft in July.

According to Nightmare Eclipse, the ShieldCrash proof-of-concept exploit lets attackers gain SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server systems, but will not give them write access to the compromised systems.

Cisco confirms CVE-2026–20079 Secure FMC flaw exploited in attacks

Cisco has confirmed that a maximum-severity authentication bypass vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026–20079 in its Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) software is being actively exploited in attacks.

The vulnerability has a maximum CVSS score of 10.0 and allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to bypass authentication and execute scripts and commands as root on vulnerable devices.

“In August 2026, the Cisco PSIRT became aware of active exploitation of this vulnerability,” Cisco updated its CVE-2026–20079 advisory to say on Wednesday.

AI reveals new class of cellular ‘off switch’ linked to cancer pathways

Cornell researchers have used artificial intelligence to uncover a previously unknown way cells control how proteins move inside them, a process essential for growth, communication and movement, and one that is often disrupted in cancer.

The study, published Sept.9 in the Journal of Cell Biology, shows that a little-understood protein called Avl9 acts as an “off switch” for another protein, Arf1, which helps direct where materials go inside cells. Turning Arf1 off at the right time is critical as it regulates cellular transport, otherwise cells become disorganized which leads to negative effects. The researchers also found that Avl9 is part of a broader group of proteins that may perform the same function, pointing to a previously unrecognized system cells use to keep this process in balance.

Led by Chris Fromme, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and faculty in the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, the team used AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence software that predicts the structures of proteins and how they might interact, to search for previously unknown partners of Arf1.

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