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Submission + - A wormable code-execution bug has lurked in Samba for 7 years. Patch now! (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by williamyf
williamyf writes: As reported in ArsTechnica, a wormable bug has remiended undetected for seven years in SaMBa verions 3.5.0 onwards. From the article:

Dan Tentler, founder of security firm Phobus Group, told Ars that more than 477,000 Samba-enabled computers exposed port 445, although it wasn't clear how many of them were running a vulnerable version of the utility. Tentler cited figures returned by the Shodan computer search engine. Researchers with security firm Rapid7, meanwhile, said they detected 110,000 devices exposed on the internet that appeared to run vulnerable versions of Samba. 92,500 of them appeared to run unsupported versions of Samba for which no patch was available.

Fortunately, there is a mitigation. Again, from the article:

Those who are unable to patch immediately can work around the vulnerability by adding the line

nt pipe support = no

to their Samba configuration file and restart the network's SMB daemon. The change will prevent clients from fully accessing some network computers and may disable some expected functions for connected Windows machines.

The patch came in fast, but the "Many eyes" took seven years for to "make the bug shallow".

Submission + - Researchers Found Perfect Contraceptives From Traditional Chinese Medicine (inverse.com) 3

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Researchers at U.C. Berkeley found a birth control that was hormone-free, 100 percent natural, resulted in no side effects, didn’t harm either eggs nor sperm, could be used in the long-term or short-term, and — perhaps the best part of all — could be used either before or after conception, from ancient Chinese folk medicine. In order to actually penetrate the egg, sperm need to whip their tails faster to pick up momentum. But there are two plant compounds that can prevent sperm from doing this, no matter how valiantly they may try — lupeol, found in mango and dandelion root, and pristimerin, from a plant called the “thunder god vine,” the leaves of which had been used as birth control in traditional Chinese medicine. The sperm and egg are never actually harmed; they’re just never able to meet, thus eliminate ethical concerns of pro-lifers. “Because these two plant compounds block fertilization at very, very low concentrations — about 10 times lower than levels of levonorgestrel in Plan B — they could be a new generation of emergency contraceptive we nicknamed ‘molecular condoms,’” team leader Polina Lishko.

Submission + - Sperm Stored In Space Produces Healthy Baby Mice On Earth (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Reproduction may be possible in space, Japanese researchers have said, after freeze-dried sperm stored on the International Space Station for nine months produced healthy offspring. The scientists said their findings could have significant ramifications for human settlements in space, which they consider “likely." The average daily radiation dose on the ISS is about 100 times stronger than that on Earth, posing a threat of serious reproductive problems for any space-dwelling organism. But mouse sperm stored on the ISS for 288 days from August 2013 to May 2014, then returned to Earth, fertilized in vitro and transferred into female mice, produced healthy offspring. The space-preserved samples showed evidence of slightly increased DNA damage compared with control samples preserved on Earth, but this was found to be largely repaired in embryos following fertilization. The birth rate and sex ratio of pups derived from the sperm stored in space was comparable to those of pups derived from the control samples. Subsequent whole genome analysis revealed only minor differences, and the pups developed into adults with normal fertility. The study was published in the proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on Monday.

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