158413923
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Bruce66423 writes:
The fascinating maps shows differing levels of cancer in Spain and Portugal, revealing differences that are hard to explain and may reveal important factors about the disease.
151436295
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An anonymous reader writes:
In a paper published Sept. 3 in Molecular Cell, [Stanley Qi, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University] and his collaborators announce what they believe is a major step forward for CRISPR: An efficient, multi-purpose, mini CRISPR system. Whereas the commonly used CRISPR systems—with names like Cas9 and Cas12a denoting various versions of CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins—are made of about 1000 to 1500 amino acids, their "CasMINI" has 529. The researchers confirmed in experiments that CasMINI could delete, activate and edit genetic code just like its beefier counterparts. Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver into human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating diverse ailments, including eye disease, organ degeneration and genetic diseases generally.Link to Original Source
151435815
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An anonymous reader writes:
Wearing face masks, particularly surgical masks, is truly effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in community settings, finds a new study led by researchers from Yale University, Stanford Medical School, the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). The study, which was carried out among more than 340,000 adults living in 600 rural communities in Bangladesh, is the first randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of face masks at reducing COVID-19 in a real-world setting, where mask use may be imperfect and inconsistent.
The results show that increased mask-wearing –– the result of a community-level mask distribution and in-person promotion campaign –– led to a significant reduction in the percentage of people with COVID-19, based on symptom reporting and SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing. The team tested both cloth and surgical masks and found especially strong evidence that surgical masks are effective in preventing COVID-19. In the study, surgical masks prevented one in three symptomatic infections among community members 60 years and older. The findings come at a crucial time in the U.S., when many in-person events have resumed and children –– including those who are under 12 and do not yet qualify for vaccination –– are returning to in-person school.Link to Original Source
151435331
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An anonymous reader writes:
Take-Two Interactive has sued several programmers and enthusiasts said to be behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects. The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit. “Defendants’ source code projects, known as re3 and reVC, purport to have created a set of software files (which Defendants claim they ‘reverse engineered’ from the original Game software) that allow members of the public to play the Games on various hardware devices, but with so-called ‘enhancements’ and ‘modifications’ added by Defendants,” the complaint reads. “Perhaps most notably, Defendants claim that their derivative GTA source code enables players to install and run the Games on multiple game platforms, including those on which the Games never have been released, such as the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch.” According to Take-Two, the defendants’ conduct is willful and deliberate since they are well aware that they do not have the necessary rights to copy, adapt or distribute derivative GTA source code or the audiovisual elements of the games. The gaming giant adds that [defendant Angelo Papenhoff] publicly expressed concern that Take-Two would find out about the ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ projects.
[...]
Take-Two says that by willfully and maliciously copying, adapting and distributing its source code and other content, all of the defendants have infringed its exclusive rights under copyright law. As a result, the company is entitled to damages in amounts to be determined at trial or, alternatively, a maximum statutory damages award of $150,000 for each infringed work. Additionally, the gaming company says that by submitting bad faith DMCA counternotices to have the projects restored to Github, three of the defendants made misrepresentations under U.S.C. 512(f). Finally, Take-Two is seeking temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief to restrain the defendants from continuing their allegedly infringing activities. The company wants all infringing source code and games removed from the Internet and wants the defendants to hand over all materials that infringe its rights. Take-Two also wants a full accounting of “any and all sales or downloads of products or services” that infringe its rights.Link to Original Source
151433717
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storagedude writes:
In a novel attack technique, Israeli security researchers discovered that cybercriminals were subscribing to Salesforce in order to use its email service to launch a phishing campaign and thus bypass corporate security defenses like whitelisting.
The researchers, from email security service provider Perception Point, said bad actors are sending phishing emails via the Salesforce email service by impersonating the Israel Postal Service in a campaign that has targeted multiple Israeli organizations.
In a blog post, security analysts Miri Slavoutsky and Shai Golderman wrote that this is the first time they had seen attackers abuse Salesforce services for malicious purposes.
“Mass Email gives users the option to send an individual, personalized email to each recipient, thus creating the perception of receiving a unique email, created especially for you,” Slavoutsky and Golderman wrote. “Spoofing attempts of Salesforce are nothing new to us. Attackers spoof emails from Salesforce for credential theft, is a typical example. In this case, the attackers actually purchased and abused the service; knowing that most companies use this service as part of their business, and therefore have it whitelisted and even allowed in their SPF records.”
Shlomi Levin, Perception Point’s co-founder and CTO, told eSecurity Planet that given how whitelisting a trusted source can result in security breaches, “it is essential to employ a zero-trust attitude combined with a strong filtering mechanism to any content that enters the organization no matter the source: email, collaboration tools or Instant Messaging.”
Stephen Banda, senior manager of security solutions at cybersecurity vendor Lookout, agreed with the researchers that it's a new approach by malicious actors.
“The practice of legitimately signing up for an email service with the full intention of using it for malice is an innovative strategy,” Banda said. “This breach should be a warning to all service providers to conduct extensive due diligence into who is requesting access to their services so that this type of scam can be avoided in the future.”
“There are ways to detect spoofing but in this case the emails look authentic and are also coming from where they say they are coming from,” said Saumitra Das, CTO of cybersecurity firm Blue Hexagon. "This means that attackers have got through the first email firewall both from a threat intelligence signature perspective of blocking known bad sources and also in some sense the instinct of the user themselves to be suspicious of what something is. It is common for attacks to get through email security solutions, but then well-trained or savvy users are the next line of defense. This [use of a legitimate email service] increases the chances of those users also clicking on links or downloading attachments.”
151338111
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redmid17 writes:
A week after allowing anti-vaccine subreddits to remain and a day after hundreds of large subreddits went silence in protest of the decision, Reddit banned the largest anti-vaccine subreddit , /NoNewNormal, for brigading, which is sending forum members to other subs to push agendas.
136916790
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SmartAboutThings writes:
A recent FBI study shows that hotel Wi-Fis aren't exactly the safest place from which you can perform sensitive online operations, especially when it comes to working.
There have been a lot of questions about the security risks involved when working from home.
Furthermore, working from a public Wi-Fi is that much more dangerous.Here's what the FBI had to say:
Guests are largely unable to control, verify, or monitor network security. Cybercriminals can take advantage of this environment to monitor a victim’s Internet browsing or redirect victims to false login pages.
That being said, using hotel Wi-Fis, in general, is not safe at all, and if you have no other choice, then you might as well give VPN services a try.
132233586
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AmiMoJo writes:
Construction is beginning on the world’s largest liquid air battery, which will store renewable electricity and reduce carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants. The project near Manchester, UK, will use spare green energy to compress air into a liquid and store it. When demand is higher, the liquid air is released back into a gas, powering a turbine that puts the green energy back into the grid.
The new liquid air battery, being developed by Highview Power, is due to be operational in 2022 and will have a capacity of 250MWh, almost double that of the largest chemical battery storage system built by Tesla. The plant’s lifetime is expected to be 30-40 years.
128789004
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lkcl writes:
Over the past several weeks, NASA satellite measurements have revealed significant reductions in air pollution over the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast United States. Similar reductions have been observed in other regions of the world. The data indicate that the nitrogen dioxide levels in March 2020 are about 30% lower on average across the region of the I-95 corridor from Washington, DC to Boston than when compared to the March mean of 2015-19
128768550
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AmiMoJo writes:
Observant Firefox users on Windows who have updated the web browser to Firefox 75 may have noticed that the upgrade brought along with it a new scheduled tasks. The scheduled task is also added if Firefox 75 is installed on a Windows device. The task's name is Firefox Default Browser Agent and it is set to run once per day. Mozilla published a blog post on the official blog of the organization that provides information on the task and why it has been created.
Essentially it uploads telemetry data to Mozilla servers unless the user opts out. Opting out can be done via the Privacy & Security section of the preferences screen. You can view collected telemetry and view your current settings at about:telemetry.
128049652
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An anonymous reader writes:
The impacts of telecommuting, shelter-in-place laws and home quarantines resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak are starting to impact broadband speeds across a number of U.S. cities, a new report has found. According to broadband analysis site BroadbandNow, 88 out of the top 200 most populous U.S. cities analyzed have now experienced some form of network degradation over the past week, compared with the 10 weeks prior, as more people are going online to work from home, video chat and stream movies and TV to keep themselves entertained. In a small handful of cities over the past week, there have even been significant degradations with download speeds dropping more than 40%, compared with the 10 weeks prior. It’s not necessarily the areas hit hardest by the spread of the novel coronavirus that are experiencing the worst problems.
Cities including LA, Chicago, Brooklyn and San Francisco have seen little or no disruption in download speeds, the report claims. Seattle is also holding up well. But New York City, now considered the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., saw download speeds drop by 24% last week, compared to the previous 10-week range. That said, NYC home network connections, which have a median speed of nearly 52 Mbps, are managing. The good news is that in the majority of markets, network speeds are holding up. But of the 88 out of 200 cities that saw declines, more than two dozen saw dips of either 20% below range or more, the data indicates.
124557168
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An anonymous reader writes:
Manhattan federal prosecutors are poised to open their case Tuesday in the trial of a former software engineer for the Central Intelligence Agency who is charged with handing over a trove of classified information on the spy agency’s hacking operations to WikiLeaks. In 2017, WikiLeaks released more than 8,000 pages of secret materials—which the antisecrecy organization called “Vault 7”—detailing the CIA’s cyberespionage arsenal, including the agency’s playbook for hacking smartphones, computer operating systems, messaging applications and internet-connected televisions. It was one of the largest breaches in the agency’s history. Federal prosecutors say the defendant, Joshua Schulte, stole the documents when he worked in a CIA unit that designed the hacking tools.
Mr. Schulte, 31 years old, faces 11 criminal counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information—charges that derive from the Espionage Act, a statute that has been applied in other WikiLeaks cases. Some of the charges relate to Mr. Schulte’s alleged misconduct and obstruction following his 2017 arrest—prosecutors say he lied to law enforcement and disobeyed court orders. Mr. Schulte and his lawyers have called the espionage charges vague and overreaching, saying they infringed on constitutional free-speech rights. They have alleged fatal errors in the government’s case, objected to the secrecy shrouding the investigation and protested Mr. Schulte’s isolated confinement in a Manhattan jail. Opening arguments in the trial are expected as soon as Tuesday, once jury selection is completed.
122046344
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DevNull127 writes:
The Debian Project has announced the results of its vote on how much to support non-systemd init systems. The eight options voted on included "focus on systemd" and "Support for multiple init systems is Required" (as well as milder choices like "Support for multiple init systems is Important" and "Support non-systemd systems, without blocking progress".) The winning option?
"Systemd but we support exploring alternatives."
Here's the position for the Debian project described by that option:
The Debian project recognizes that systemd service units are the preferred configuration for describing how to start a daemon/service. However, Debian remains an environment where developers and users can explore and develop alternate init systems and alternatives to systemd features.
Those interested in exploring such alternatives need to provide the necessary development and packaging resources to do that work. Technologies such as elogind that facilitate exploring alternatives while running software that depends on some systemd interfaces remain important to Debian. It is important that the project support the efforts of developers working on such technologies where there is overlap between these technologies and the rest of the project, for example by reviewing patches and participating in discussions in a timely manner.
Packages should include service units or init scripts to start daemons and services. Packages may use any systemd facility at the package maintainer's discretion, provided that this is consistent with other Policy requirements and the normal expectation that packages shouldn't depend on experimental or unsupported (in Debian) features of other packages. Packages may include support for alternate init systems besides systemd and may include alternatives for any systemd-specific interfaces they use. Maintainers use their normal procedures for deciding which patches to include.
Debian is committed to working with derivatives that make different choices about init systems. As with all our interactions with downstreams, the relevant maintainers will work with the downstreams to figure out which changes it makes sense to fold into Debian and which changes remain purely in the derivative.
122011152
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schwit1 writes:
The biggest recurrent motif among the major data breaches of 2019 wasn't the black-hooded hacker in a dark room, digging into a screen full of green text. It was a faceless set of executives and security professionals under the fluorescent lights of an office somewhere, frantically dialing their attorneys and drafting public relations apologies after leaving the front doors of their servers unlocked in public.
The words "unsecured database" seemed to run on repeat through security journalism in 2019. Every month, another company was asking its customers to change their passwords and report any damage. Cloud-based storage companies like Amazon Web Services and ElasticSearch repeatedly saw their names surface in stories of negligent companies — in the fields of health care, hospitality, government and elsewhere — which left sensitive customer data unprotected in the open wilds of the internet, to be bought and sold by hackers who barely had to lift a finger to find it.
And it's not just manic media coverage. The total number of breaches was up 33% over last year, according to research from Risk Based Security, with medical services, retailers and public entities most affected. That's a whopping 5,183 data breaches for a total of 7.9 billion exposed records.
In November, the research firm called 2019 the "worst year on record" for breaches.
The truth is, until a suite of industry-shaping federal reforms and regulations slap some accountability into US data brokerages and communications companies while miraculously rolling back government mass-surveillance programs, keeping one's data trail clean is about as likely to save you from being part of a mega-breach as recycling your coffee cup is to stop climate change.Link to Original Source
115457216
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An anonymous reader writes:
President Trump’s administration has rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country’s smaller waterways, furthering his deregulatory efforts in the 14 months that remain before the next election. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday signed a final rule that limits the scope of federal clean-water regulations in an effort to clear up confusion for landowners whose property sits near water sources that feed into the country’s network of major rivers. The Obama administration in 2015 had expanded federal oversight upstream, it said, to better protect wildlife and the country’s drinking-water supply from industrial runoff and pollution.
Mr. Wheeler called that expansion an overreach, saying it grew to cover dry land in some cases. Farmers, property developers, chemical manufacturers and oil-and-gas producers—some of whom are key voter groups for the 2020 election—have voiced opposition to it, with many saying it overreached by intruding on property owners’ rights. Court battles following the Obama-era rule have led to fractured rules across the country. Amid the legal challenges, the regulation is in place only in 22 states, though the Trump administration’s decision could spark its own series of court fights.
