Month: May 2016

An illustration of what some of the new exoplanets announced today may look like, along with their host stars. (credit: NASA)

It is one thing to observe the periodic dimming of a star’s light, as NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has done for thousands of planet “candidates” since its launch in 2009. However, to confirm that such dimmings are in fact due to a planet passing in front of a star, as opposed to any number of false positives such as a binary star companion, requires intensive follow-up work with ground-based instruments, most often a measurement of radial velocity to determine the object’s mass.

To ease this workload, planetary astronomers have devised a few different statistical techniques, but none have been fully automated until now. Princeton University researcher Timothy Morton has developed software that can, within a few minutes, asses the orbital period and other data gathered by Kepler to assign a statistical probability that planet “candidates” are, or are not, planets. When tested on previously confirmed exoplanets and false positives, the new technique worked almost flawlessly.

Described in the Astrophysical Journal, this new method allowed scientists to rapidly assess Kepler’s planet candidate catalog from July, 2015, which identified 4,302 potential planets. Of these, the new technique found that 1,284 were planets at a confidence level of 99 percent or greater. An additional 1,327 are likely planets, but did not reach the 99 percent confidence threshold.

(credit: Ann Oro)

Windows users woke up to something that doesn't happen every day: the disclosure of two zero-day vulnerabilities, one in the Microsoft operating system and the other in Adobe's Flash Player.

The Windows bug is being actively exploited in the wild, making it imperative that users install fixes that Microsoft released today as part of its May Patch Tuesday. Cataloged as CVE-2016-0189, the security flaw allows attackers to surreptitiously execute malicious code when vulnerable computers visit booby-trapped websites. In the days or weeks leading up to Tuesday, it has been exploited in targeted attacks on South Korean websites, according to a blog post published by security firm Symantec. Technically, the vulnerability resides in the JScript and VBScript engines, but IE is the vehicle used to exploit it.

Separately, Adobe officials warned that a newly discovered Flash vulnerability also gives attackers the ability to remotely hijack machines. It was first reported by researchers from security firm FireEye, and exploits exist in the wild. Adobe said it planned to release an update as soon as Thursday.