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Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
Space

Sophisticated Balloons Could Help Steer Spacecraft 96

coondoggie writes "Getting spacecraft traveling at hypersonic speeds to slow down and land or achieve a particular orbit on a dime is no easy feat. But researchers are developing a tool that will let engineers model and ultimately build advanced flight control systems that meld balloon and parachute technologies known as a ballute (BALLoon-parachUTE). Basically a ballute is a large, inflatable device that takes advantage of atmospheric drag to decelerate and capture a spacecraft into orbit around a planet, according to NASA who is funding Global Aerospace to build such a tool."

Comment Re:Just wait... (Score 1) 371

If the virus writer actually understands public key crypto, they'd quickly realize it would be pointless to encrypt a "My Documents" folder with it...it isn't fast enough (The default "My Music" folder is in "My Documents" to give an idea of how large that folder can be). Private (shared) key encryption is much faster, which is why it is always used (yes, even in public-key crypto apps..seems ironic...but this is just about how everyone implements it as long as I can remember)

Assuming they properly implement it to work around the speed issues (see above), we still get to do a known-plaintext attack on the encrypted data. And if the password is randomly generated by the victim, those who don't keep backups are screwed, unfortunately. Those who do keep backups could work out the key for the benefit of everyone in the case it isn't randomly generated (though using a test environment with controlled files in "My Documents" should be better).

It basically comes down to: we know the alrgorithm, the plain-text, and the cipher-text...we could eventually work out the password. But those who do keep backups (or put the files elsewhere) wouldn't really need to worry about decrypting the file...and working it out is only useful if it isn't random...

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