Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Jul 5
2021

Google cloud VMs servers can be hacked via DHCP using this vulnerability in a specific scenario

A recent security report states that it is possible to hijack sessions on Google Compute Engine virtual machines to gain root access through a DHCP attack. While deploying this attack is impractical, an exploit attempt can be highly functional.

The report, published on GitHub, mentions that a threat actor could allow threat actors to take control of virtual machines because these deployments rely on ISC DHCP software, which employs a very weak random number generator. A successful attack clutters these virtual machines with DHCP traffic, forcing the use of a fake metadata server controlled by an attacker.

If the attack is successful, the virtual machine uses the unauthorized server for its configuration instead of an official Google one, which would allow cybercriminals to log in to the affected device with root access.

Jul 5
2021

Ultra-Realistic Hand Scans

A Founder of 3D Scan Store has shown a re-rendered version of one of the realistic hand scans.

Jul 5
2021

A residue-free approach to water disinfection using catalytic in situ generation of reactive oxygen species

Despite its biocidal properties, the use of hydrogen peroxide is still limited in the context of water disinfection. Here an approach is disclosed based on the generation of H2O2 in situ by means of an AuPd catalyst, which can compete with chlorination methods by generating a highly reactive radical flux.

Jul 4
2021

This VTOL Aircraft Flies Without Any Blades!

The J-2000 VTOL flying vehicle doesn’t use any blades, instead it uses a quiet “fluidic propulsion system,” the future of flying vehicles.

Jul 4
2021

How Neutrons Might Escape Into Another Universe

Circa 2012

The idea that our universe is embedded in a broader multidimensional space has captured the imagination of scientists and the general population alike.

This notion is not entirely science fiction. According to some theories, our cosmos may exist in parallel with other universes in other sets of dimensions. Cosmologists call these universes braneworlds. And among that many prospects that this raises is the idea that things from our Universe might somehow end up in another.

A couple of years ago, Michael Sarrazin at the University of Namur in Belgium and a few others showed how matter might make the leap in the presence of large magnetic potentials. That provided a theoretical basis for real matter swapping.

Jul 4
2021

Fourth of July weekend ransomware attack hits thousands of companies in 17 countries

In some cases, chain reactions fed more widespread disruption.

The Swedish Coop grocery store chain had to close hundreds of stores on Saturday because its cash registers are run by Visma Esscom, which manages servers for a number of Swedish businesses and in turn uses Kaseya.

Brett Callow, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said he was unaware of any previous ransomware supply-chain attack on this scale.

Jul 4
2021

Israel used world’s first AI-guided combat drone swarm in Gaza attacks

During operations in Gaza in mid-May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used a swarm of small drones to locate, identify and attack Hamas militants. This is thought to be the first time a drone swarm has been used in combat.

Jul 4
2021

Mass extinction: what can stop it? | The Economist

The world’s animals and wildlife are becoming extinct at a greater rate than at any time in human history. Could technology help to save threatened species?

Read our latest technology quarterly on protecting biodiversity: https://econ.st/3dqdkKN

Listen to our Babbage podcast episode on the biodiversity crisis: https://econ.st/3dqfPww.

How should economists think about biodiversity?: https://econ.st/3y1zCu7

Humans are wreaking havoc on global biodiversity: https://econ.st/3jqM5U8

Continue reading “Mass extinction: what can stop it? | The Economist” | >

Jul 4
2021

Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world

This is the opposite of what most people (including me) expected, and will have strange effects.

Jul 4
2021

Engineering Breakthrough Paves Way for Chip Components That Could Serve As Both RAM and ROM

Year after year, the explosive growth of computing power relies on manufacturers’ ability to fit more and more components into the same amount of space on a silicon chip. That progress, however, is now approaching the limits of the laws of physics, and new materials are being explored as potential replacements for the silicon semiconductors long at the heart of the computer industry.

New materials may also enable entirely new paradigms for individual chip components and their overall design. One long-promised advance is the ferroelectric field-effect transistor, or FE-FET. Such devices could switch states rapidly enough to perform computation, but also be able to hold those states without being powered, enabling them to function as long-term memory storage. Serving double duty as both RAM and ROM, FE-FET devices would make chips more space efficient and powerful.

The hurdle for making practical FE-FET devices has always been in manufacturing; the materials that best exhibit the necessary ferroelectric effect aren’t compatible with techniques for mass-producing silicon components due the high temperature requirements of the ferroelectric materials.