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Submission + - Adobe Patches One Flash Zero Day, Another Still Unfixed

Trailrunner7 writes: Adobe has released an emergency update for Flash to address a zero-day vulnerability that is being actively exploited. The company also is looking into reports of exploits for a separate Flash bug not fixed in the new release, which is being used in attacks by the Angler exploit kit.

The vulnerability that Adobe patched Thursday is under active attack, but Adobe officials said that this flaw is not the one that security researcher Kafeine said Wednesday was being used in the Angler attacks.

The patch for Flash comes just a day after Kafeine disclosed that some instances of the Angler exploit kit contained an exploit for a previously unknown vulnerability in the software. Adobe officials said Wednesday that they were investigating the reports. Kafeine initially saw Angler attacking the latest version of Flash in IE on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8, but said the exploit wasn’t being used against Chrome or Firefox.

On Thursday he said on Twitter that the group behind Angler had changed the code to exploit Firefox as well as fully patched IE 11 on Windows 8.1.

Submission + - Ebola Outbreaks Might Start With Non-Deadly Virus Which Mutates As It Spreads

BarbaraHudson writes: Investigators tracked the Zaire Ebola strain, the virus circulating in the West African outbreak, as it spread among laboratory animals. The first animals to be infected were not affected by the virus, but it became more lethal as it spread to other animals.

By analyzing the virus at different stages, the British scientists identified several genetic changes that made Ebola more deadly as it spread. "The work tells us that the evolutionary goal of Ebola virus is to become more lethal," study co-author Julian Hiscox, of the University of Liverpool Institute of Infection and Global Health, said in a university news release.

Submission + - New Advance Confines GMOs To The Lab Instead Of Living In The Wild

BarbaraHudson writes: from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept. In Jurassic Park, scientists tweak dinosaur DNA so that the dinosaurs were lysine-deficient in order to keep them from spreading in the wild. Scientists have taken this one step further as a way to keep genetically modified E. coli from surviving outside the lab. In modifying the bacteria's DNA to thwart escape, two teams altered the genetic code to require amino acids not found in nature. One team modified the genes that coded for proteins crucial to cell functions so that that produced proteins required the presence of the synthetic amino acid in the protein itself. The other team focused on 22 genes deemed essential to a bacterial cell's functions and tied the genes' expression to the presence of synthetic amino acids. For the bacteria to survive, these synthetic amino acids had to be present in the medium on which the bacteria fed. In both cases, the number of escapees was so small as to be undetectable.

Comment A lot of corporate work is routine. (Score 1) 156

"... no longer secure..."

OpenBSD is secure because it was examined carefully for vulnerabilities. Microsoft makes more money if there are vulnerabilities, and if its older products are considered likely to be insecure.

"... when it no longer boots..."

We have corporate users who do the same thing every day on computers installed in 2004. They don't want change.

"... when none of the software you use will still run on the old OS"

Yes, you and I. But some corporate users do specialized corporate work on software that ran under DOS. It does what they want. There is little call for change.

"... when you have to employ tech staff with out-of-date skills..."

The Windows command line windows are mostly just the old DOS. There is nothing out-of-date.

"... when the software is a dead do-do that nobody wants to touch..."

Lots of people do lots of things that have remained stable for decades.

"Sorry, but everything has an end-of-life."

I talked to a guy who makes a lot of money per hour maintaining Cobol programs on old mainframes. Yes, end of life. But possibly decades from now.

"When you can't log into your damn bank because it's said that IE6 is too old..."

The browsers are updated frequently, of course. And computers connected only to an internal network have no outside internet vulnerabilities, if there are no DVD drives. I talked to a woman who worked at Tektronix who could not send an email from her work computer because there was no outside access.

Should employees be allowed to explore the internet during lunch breaks? Sure, on a separate network in the lunch room.

I have the latest hardware and software, a 24-port gigabit switch, and multiple 3 Terabyte RAID drives. But that's because I make a lot more techological demands than the average person.

I don't feel conflict of interest. Unfortunately, conflict of interest is a big factor in the lives of many people who are involved with computer technology. Their minds are persuaded by what would make them more money.

Comment 20 Windows XP computers: No problems. (Score 1) 156

What I said may be imperfectly expressed. However, we have about 20 Windows XP computers operated by people who are not intense about cooperating. Those computers are guarded only by Malwarebytes and the fact that are all limited users, and we've had no problems.

The point I was trying to make is that, if there is enough attention given, software can be free of vulnerabilities.

Comment End of support, not "end of life". (Score 4, Insightful) 156

Software does not have an "end of life". It continues to do what it always did.

"End of life" is a marketing term used so Microsoft can sell more copies of Windows, apparently. My understanding is that fixing newly discovered vulnerabilities in Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 would be fairly inexpensive.

I've explored the issues concerning Windows XP: Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest.

Submission + - Oak Ridge's Hyperion Offers More Powerful Malware Detection (hacked.com)

giulioprisco writes: R&K Cyber Solutions has licensed Hyperion, a cyber security technology from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which can detect malware by looking inside an executable program to determine the software’s behavior without using its source code or running the program. The Hyperion technology, which has been under development for a decade, offers more comprehensive scanning capabilities than existing cyber security methods.

Submission + - Oracle Releases Massive Security Update (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: Oracle has pushed out a massive security update, including critical fixes for Java SE and the Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite. Overall, the update contains nearly 170 new security vulnerability fixes, including 36 for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Twenty-eight of these may be remotely exploitable without authentication and can possibly be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.

Comment They're not thinking clearly: Side-effects. (Score 1) 290

Exactly. And maybe one of the radar makers will secretly start a corporation that makes radar jammers. Eventually all radar will become useless.

And anyone re-painting a wall could put aluminum foil on the wall first.

Most importantly: Some of the automobile radar detectors would probably work as house radar detectors.

Comment It's VERY easy to fix the problem with radar. (Score 1) 290

It's VERY easy to fix the problem with radar going inside houses. Build houses with aluminum foil on the walls.

In older houses, put aluminum foil on the walls, then more insulation, then drywall. Save money on heating and cooling.

Make a law that says no new houses can be built without foil on the walls.

Submission + - These Geeks Want to Fix the Drought 1

bearhuntz writes: VC-backed WaterSmart is trying to fix the California drought by using data and shame.

“Research shows,” says Yolles, “that only one out of ten people are motivated to save money and only one out of ten are motivated to save the environment. But eight out of ten will do so to keep up with the Joneses.”

Original story: https://medium.com/backchannel...

Submission + - How the U.S. Army Plans to Defeat the Unthinkable: Drone Swarms (nationalinterest.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Yes, the US military loves to use drones against enemies who have no defense against them: think terrorist cells, ISIS/IS/ISIL, the Taliban etc. However, drones are getting cheaper to make, easier to use, and more technological sophisticated. The day is coming--and coming quite soon--where U.S. military planners will have to defend against drones. And they may have to fight off lots of them.

The U.S. Army seems to have some ideas: "The Army wants a weapon that can both detect and destroy a swarm of UAVs. It would "disrupt these platforms’ autonomous flight-control and navigation capabilities or cueing a weapons system like the Remotely-Operated Weapon Station (RWS) or other medium or large-caliber weapon.," said the Army's research proposal. The system would be mounted on vehicles or at Army installations. More interesting, the Army proposal also notes that it might be mounted on UAVs, which raises the possibility of using drones to shoot down other drones."

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