Month: May 2016

(credit: Rockydallas)

ISPs around the world are being attacked by self-replicating malware that can take complete control of widely used wireless networking equipment, according to reports from customers and a security researcher who is following the ongoing campaign.

San Jose, California-based Ubiquity Networks confirmed on Friday that attackers are actively targeting a flaw in AirOS, the Linux-based firmware that runs the wireless routers, access points, and other gear sold by the company. The vulnerability, which allows attackers to gain access to the devices over HTTP and HTTPS connections without authenticating themselves, was patched last July, but the fix wasn't widely installed. Many customers claimed they never received notification of the threat.

Nico Waisman, a researcher at security firm Immunity, said he knows of two Argentina-based ISPs that went dark for two days after being hit by the worm. He said he's seen credible reports of ISPs in Spain and Brazil being infected by the same malware and that it's likely ISPs in the US and elsewhere were also hit, since the exploit has no geographic restrictions. Once successful, the exploit he examined replaces the password files of an infected device and then scans the network it's on for other vulnerable gear. After a certain amount of time, the worm resets infected devices to their factory default configurations, with the exception of leaving behind a backdoor account, and then disappears. Ubiquity officials have said there are at least two variations, so it's possible other strains behave differently.

Enlarge / The 2015 Chromebook Pixel will be one of the first to be able to run Android apps. The original 2013 Chromebook Pixel doesn't even make the list. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The Google Play store is coming to Chrome OS, and it's bringing every single Android app along with it. That means that every app that runs on Android—everything from Microsoft Word to Hearthstone to Firefox—will be able to run on Chrome OS without noticeable performance penalties. At least, you'll be able to run Android apps if you have a modern Chromebook.

Google has published a compatibility list for the feature, including both the small handful of systems that will be compatible with the early developer channel betas and a longer list of Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and Chromebases that will be supported later in 2016 as the stable version rolls out. That list doesn't include most Chromebooks more than two years old, which Google tells us is intentional; Android apps should be supported on all new Chromebooks going forward and older hardware going back to 2015 or late 2014, but hardware older than that isn't likely to run them.

The cutoff appears to be mostly age-based and not influenced by the system's OEM, capabilities, speed, price, or CPU architecture. The original Chromebook Pixel doesn't show up on the list, for instance, despite being a Google-made system with a touchscreen and faster hardware than many modern low-end Chromebooks. Many of these systems will continue to get regular Chrome OS updates for some time yet, since Google's Chrome OS End of Life policy guarantees updates for at least five years from a device's release date. And enterprising Chrome OS users may find some way to enable the feature unofficially. But at least for now, newer Chromebooks are going to have access to a whole pile of apps that older Chromebooks just can't use.

CDC staff show two plates growing bacteria in the presence of discs containing various antibiotics. The isolate on the left plate is susceptible to the antibiotics on the discs and is therefore unable to grow around the discs. The one on the right has a CRE that is resistant to all of the antibiotics tested and is able to grow near the disks. (credit: CDC)

Without new drugs and drastic changes to the way we use antimicrobials, the future may have a lot in common with the dark ages, warns a new report commissioned by the UK government and released Thursday.

In an ominous description, the report suggests that by 2050, antimicrobial-resistant infections could sop up $100 trillion from the global economy while killing off 10 million people per year—about a death every three seconds. In addition, common procedures, such as gut surgeries, C sections, hip replacements, and therapies that suppress the immune system, including cancer chemotherapies, may be ditched for fear of sparking resistant, life-threatening infections. Thus, childbirth could once again be widely considered a deadly endeavor, joint injuries could go untreated, and curable diseases could revert to incurable.

This grim view stems from modeled scenarios carried out by two consulting groups, auditors KPMG and Rand Europe, for the report. But those numbers are likely an underestimate, the authors note. The report only accounts for a handful of types of antimicrobial infections, and it is limited by poor infection records. Currently, experts estimate that drug-resistant microbes cause 700,000 deaths per year globally, but that number may also be an underestimate. The new report also didn’t account for all indirect healthcare costs.

This Halo 5 combatant looks like he's praying. If he's praying for some actual Halo 5 on PC, then he's in for some good news.

Microsoft's play to bridge the gap between Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs got a lot more interesting on Thursday thanks to a pretty major Halo 5 announcement. Microsoft and its Halo development house, 343 Industries, have taken the wraps off the awkwardly named Forge–Halo 5: Guardians Edition, which they say will launch for free across Windows 10 "later this year."

This limited free version of Halo 5 won't include the game's single-player campaign, nor will it include multiplayer matchmaking with random opponents. However, Microsoft representatives have confirmed to Ars that the free Windows 10 game will support unfettered online play with anyone on a player's friends list. That means players can create or download a Forge map and invite anyone else playing the Windows 10 version to join in and play to whatever "kill count," time limit, or other win condition they've set. Even better, Microsoft says that this friends-only multiplayer mode in Windows 10 will fully support mouse-and-keyboard game controls.

As series fans know, Halo's Forge mode allows players to build content-filled maps and lay down a litany of custom rules and modifiers for the game. This Windows 10 version, as its lengthy title suggests, will allow people to do the same thing on their PCs, complete with mouse and keyboard support that 343 Industries says will be "easier/faster" to use than an Xbox controller (though we have yet to see how keyboard shortcuts and other features will work on a PC version).

In 2013, a group at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering brought miniaturization to the world of drones, creating a tiny robot that could fly using rapidly beating wings. Now, after adding a handful of team members from other institutions, Robert Woods' team is back with a paper that gives an update to the group's little flying machines—one that lets the robots hang upside down like bats.

This might at first seem like a frivolous addition (although doing something because it's pretty cool can be a major motivator for cutting-edge engineering). But the researchers have some pretty solid reasons for adding the feature. One of the main reasons you'd build a drone, tiny or otherwise, is to be able to look down on an area from a high vantage point. A big limitation of this approach is that getting to and staying in that high vantage point takes energy.

If there's a way to latch on to something and sit there, it could provide big energy savings, which could allow the drone to monitor an area for much longer than it would otherwise be able to. In the case of a miniature drones, the authors have latch points like "trees, buildings, or powerlines."

Net neutrality law and protection of data equality (credit: Getty Images | Kagenmi)

Internet service customers have filed 20,991 net neutrality complaints since the rules went into effect on June 12 of last year, according to new data released by the Federal Communications Commission.

The data includes 86,114 Internet service complaints filed since October 31, 2014 against home Internet and cellular ISPs. Net neutrality has been the most common type of complaint since the rules went into effect and is near the top of the list even when counting the first seven months of the data set in which net neutrality complaints weren't yet being accepted. In the full data set, billing complaints led the way at 22,989—with 16,393 since June 12. The other top categories for the entire period since late 2014 were service availability with 14,251 complaints, speed with 11,200 complaints, and privacy with 7,968 privacy complaints.

Despite the large numbers, this data doesn't show that there were any net neutrality violations. The FCC's website notes that the agency doesn't verify the facts in each complaint; these are just raw numbers based on the categories selected by customers when they file complaints. As we've written before, complaints filed under the net neutrality category are often unrelated to the core net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Consumers often complain about slow speeds, high prices, and data caps under the net neutrality category.

The Android game Galaxy On Fire running on the Chromebook Pixel. (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—It's really happening. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS. And it's not just a small subset of apps; the entire Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. More than 1.5 million apps will come to a platform that before today was "just a browser," and Android and Chrome OS take yet another step closer together.

In advance of the show, we were able to sit down with members of the Chrome OS team and get a better idea of exactly what Chrome OS users are in for. The goal is an "It just works" solution, with zero effort from developers required to get their Android app up and running. Notifications and in-line replies should all work. Android apps live in native Chrome OS windows, making them look like part of the OS. Chrome OS has picked up some Android tricks too—sharing and intent systems should work fine, even from one type of app or website to another. Google is aiming for a unified, seamless user experience.

Starting in early June, developer channel builds of Chrome OS will see a pop-up message allowing them to opt-in to Google Play and Android app compatibility. This will roll out to touch-enabled Chromebooks first in the "M53 Dev" version, with support for non-touch devices coming soon after. We were told a full-scale rollout to the Chrome OS stable channel should happen sometime in September or October.