Microsoft: Some Ransomware Attacks Take Less Than 45 Minutes

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet: For many years, the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report has been the gold standard in terms of providing a yearly overview of all the major events and trends in the cyber-security and threat intelligence landscape. While Microsoft unceremoniously retired the old SIR reports back in 2018, the OS maker appears to have realized its mistake, and has…

The Case for Life on Venus

CNET describes Venus as “a toxic, overheated, crushing hellscape where nothing can survive.” But they reported Friday that one astronomy team’s hypothesis published last month “could prompt a reevaluation of how and where we look for life in the universe.” Carl Sagan speculated about life in the clouds of Venus back in 1967, and just a few years ago, researchers suggested…

Truck-sized asteroid swept within 2,000 miles on Sunday

Asteroid ZTF0DxQ – now officially labeled 2020 QG – now holds the record for the closest flyby of Earth. It swept just 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from Earth’s surface, or about a quarter of the diameter of Earth itself. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/closest-known-asteroid-flyby-ztf0dxq-2020-qg…

Virtual House Hunting Gets a Pandemic Boost

Padraig Belton from the BBC writes about how house hunters are using virtual-reality headsets to tour homes in the age of coronavirus. From the report: It’s not for everyone as, at the moment, house hunters have to use their own headsets. But Giles Milner, marketing director at estate agent Chestertons, says he will sometimes send buyers headsets for new-build properties, if…

SOHO’s 4,000th comet

This week, a citizen scientist spotted a never-before-seen comet in data from the sun-observing SOHO spacecraft. It was SOHO’s 4,000th comet discovery. Learn more and watch comets sweep near the sun in this video. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sohos-4000th-comet…

After 10 Years, Hidden $1M Treasure Chest Finally Found

89-year-old Forrest Fenn had a secret, reports the Guardian. He’d hidden a treasure chest worth over $1 million somewhere in America’s Rocky Mountains: For more than a decade, he packed and repacked his treasure chest, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets. Pre-Colombian animal figures went in, along with prehistoric mirrors of hammered gold,…

$100 Million in Bounties Paid by HackerOne To Ethical Hackers

Bug bounty platform HackerOne announced today that it has paid out $100,000,000 in rewards to white-hat hackers around the world as of May 26, 2020. From a report: Since it started delivering vulnerability reports to its customers, HackerOne bug bounty hunters have found roughly 170,000 security vulnerabilities according to the company’s CEO Marten Mickos. Over 700,000 ethical hackers are no using…

Planet hunters discover new ‘one in a million’ Super-Earth

Astronomers at the University of Canterbury (UC) have found an incredibly rare new Super-Earth planet towards the centre of the galaxy. The planet is one of only a handful that have been discovered with both size and orbit comparable to that of Earth. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-planet-hunters-million-super-earth.html…