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Dec 8, 2020

The NSA Warns That Russia Is Attacking Remote Work Platforms

Posted by in categories: government, privacy

A vulnerability in VMWare has prompted a warning that companies—and government agencies—need to patch as soon as possible.

Dec 8, 2020

Norway says Russian groups ‘likely’ behind Parliament cyber attack

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Norway’s domestic security agency has said that Russian hackers linked to the country’s military intelligence service were “likely” behind a cyber attack against the Norwegian parliament this year.

The network operation behind the attack was part of “a broader national and international campaign that lasts at least since 2019” the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) said in a statement.

Dec 8, 2020

Spies with Russia’s foreign intelligence service believed to have hacked a top American cybersecurity firm and stolen its sensitive tools

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

The Russians stole hacking tools that FireEye uses to detect weaknesses in its customers’ networks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Dec 8, 2020

Google opens its Fuchsia operating system to outside developers

Posted by in categories: computing, governance

For the longest time, Google’s new Fuchsia operating system remained a bit of a mystery — with little information in terms of the company’s plans for it, even as the team behind it brought the code to GitHub under a standard open-source license. These days, we know that it’s Google’s first attempt at developing a completely new kernel and general purpose operating system that promises to be more than just an experiment (or a retention project to keep senior engineers from jumping ship). For the most part, though, Google has remained pretty mum about the subject.

It seems like Google is ready to start talking about Fuchsia a bit more now. The company today announced that it is expanding the Fuchsia open-source community and opening it up to contributions from the public. Typically, companies start opening up their open-source projects to outside contributors once they feel they have achieved a stable foundation that others can build on.

“Starting today, we are expanding Fuchsia ‘s open source model to make it easier for the public to engage with the project,” the team writes. “We have created new public mailing lists for project discussions, added a governance model to clarify how strategic decisions are made, and opened up the issue tracker for public contributors to see what’s being worked on. As an open source effort, we welcome high-quality, well-tested contributions from all. There is now a process to become a member to submit patches, or a committer with full write access.”

Dec 8, 2020

Europe hopes new R&D fund will boost meager defense capabilities and create opportunities for science

Posted by in categories: drones, military, robotics/AI, science

Future EDF research topics will be specified in annual calls run by the European Commission, the EU executive branch, and approved by a committee of national delegates. AI will be a big topic, Ripoche says. He says EDF funding will also go to new materials, such as discreet metamaterial antennas that can be engineered into the surfaces of vehicles and weapons. Muravska says she expects “a healthy take-up” in the EDF by European academic researchers, “provided they are aware of it.”


With no military of its own, European Union funds work on camouflage, drones, and laser weapons.

Dec 8, 2020

Scientists build implant that restores vision

Posted by in category: computing

WASHINGTON: Scientists are a step closer to restoring vision for the blind, after building an implant that bypasses the eyes and allows monkeys to perceive artificially induced patterns in their brains.

The technology, developed by a team at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), was described in the journal Science on Thursday.

It builds on an idea first conceived decades ago: electrically stimulating the brain so it “sees” lit dots known as phosphenes, akin to pixels on a computer screen.

Dec 8, 2020

FireEye, a Top Cybersecurity Firm, Says It Was Hacked by a Nation-State

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

The Silicon Valley company said hackers — almost certainly Russian — made off with tools that could be used to mount new attacks around the world.

Dec 8, 2020

Cybersecurity firm FireEye says it was hacked by a nation-state

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, government

FireEye, normally the first company that cyberattack victims will call, has now admitted it too has fallen victim to hackers, which the company called a “sophisticated threat actor” that was likely backed by a nation-state.

In a blog post confirming the breach, the company’s chief executive Kevin Mandia said the nation-backed hackers have “top-tier offensive capabilities,” but did not attribute blame or say which government was behind the attack.

Mandia, who founded Mandiant, the incident response firm acquired by FireEye in 2014, said the hackers used a “novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past” to steal hacking tools used typically by red teams, which are tasked with launching authorized but offensive hacking campaigns against customers in order to find weaknesses or vulnerabilities before malicious hackers do.

Dec 8, 2020

Apple Reaches $2 Trillion, Punctuating Big Tech’s Grip

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Apple is the first U.S. company to hit that value, a staggering ascent that began in the pandemic.

Dec 8, 2020

Elon Musk confirms he’s moved to Texas after a months-long fight with California

Posted by in category: Elon Musk

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the announcement at a virtual conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.