Hackers who tapped into government networks through SolarWinds software potentially accessed about 3% of the Justice Department’s email accounts, but there’s no indication they accessed classified systems, a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. From a report: The DOJ Office of the Chief Information Officer learned of the hack the day of Christmas Eve, according to the statement, where agents…
Tag: systems
Hostile space weather might not be all bad for exoplanet life
A new study from Northwestern University shows that solar flares – space weather – might not always be as dangerous for life on exoplanets as typically thought. In fact, it might even help astronomers discover alien life on distant worlds. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/hostile-space-weather-might-not-be-all-bad-for-exoplanet-life…
Hackers Target Cryptocurrency Users With New ElectroRAT Malware
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Security firm Intezer Labs said it discovered a covert year-long malware operation where cybercriminals created fake cryptocurrency apps in order to trick users into installing a new strain of malware on their systems, with the obvious end goal of stealing victims’ funds. The campaign was discovered last month in December 2020, but researchers…
Breaking through the resolution barrier with quantum-limited precision
Researchers at Paderborn University have developed a new method of distance measurement for systems such as GPS, which achieves more precise results than ever before. Using quantum physics, the team led by Leibniz Prize winner Professor Christine Silberhorn has successfully overcome the so-called resolution limit, which causes the ‘noise’ we may see in photos, for example. Their findings have just been…
Malware Uses WiFi BSSID for Victim Identification
An anonymous reader shares a report: Malware operators who want to know the location of the victims they infect usually rely on a simple technique where they grab the victim’s IP address and check it against an IP-to-geo database like MaxMind’s GeoIP to get a victim’s approximate geographical location. While the technique isn’t very accurate, it is still the most reliable…
Researchers reveal effects of magnetic activity on mass transfer of binary
Algol-type binary systems consist of a B-A-F type main-sequence primary component and an F-G-K type giant or subgiant secondary component. According to the explanation of the Algol paradox, the initially more massive component evolves to fill the Roche lobes first and transfer material to another component, which results in the inversion of mass ratio and the formation of the Algol-type systems….
71-Year-Old Slashdot Reader Describes His ‘Moderate’ Case of Covid
71-year-old Hugh Pickens (Slashdot reader #49,171) is a physicist who explored for oil in the Amazon jungle, commissioned microwave communications systems in Saudi Arabia, and built satellite control stations for Goddard Space Flight Center around the world including Australia, Antarctica, and Guam. After retiring in 1999, he wrote over 1,400 Slashdot posts, and in the site’s 23-year history still remains one…
Is the US Government’s Cybersecurity Agency Up to the Job?
CNN reports that some critics are now questioning whether America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is equipped to protect the integrity of government systems from adversaries: Some of the nearly half-dozen government agencies affected by the hack have recently reached out to CISA for help with addressing the known vulnerabilities that were exploited in the attack but were told the…
G.E. Wind Turbine Prototype: 853 Feet Tall, Can Generate 13 Megawatts
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the New York Times: Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor [in the Netherlands] is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any…
Among 2020’s Most Underreported Stories: Pharmaceutical Profiteering May Accelerate Superbugs
Since 1976 “Project Censored,” a U.S.-based nonprofit media watchdog organization, has been identifying “the news that didn’t make the news,” the most significant stories it believes are being systematically overlooked. Slashdot ran stories about its annual list of the year’s most censored news stories in 1999, 2003, 2004, and in 2007, when they’d presciently warned that the media was ignoring the…