Month: June 2017

Enlarge / One of the pages published Thursday in WikiLeaks' latest Vault 7 release. (credit: WikiLeaks)

WikiLeaks just published details of a purported CIA operation that turns Windows file servers into covert attack machines that surreptitiously infect computers of interest inside a targeted network.

"Pandemic," as the implant is codenamed, turns file servers into a secret carrier of whatever malware CIA operatives want to install, according to documents published Thursday by WikiLeaks. When targeted computers attempt to access a file on the compromised server, Pandemic uses a clever bait-and-switch tactic to surreptitiously deliver malicious version of the requested file. The Trojan is then executed by the targeted computers. A user manual said Pandemic takes only 15 seconds to be installed. The documents didn't describe precisely how Pandemic would get installed on a file server.

In a note accompanying Thursday's release, WikiLeaks officials wrote:

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Thinkstock / Whitehouse)

After months of delays and rumors of a divided White House, President Trump is announcing today his intent to withdraw from the international Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, abdicating leadership on climate change.

Despite the public pronouncement, the US cannot simply quit Paris and go home. Per the terms of the agreement, the US cannot submit its withdrawal until November 2019, and it wouldn’t formally be out for at least a year after that. In the meantime, the Trump Administration could choose to skip international talks, but it will still have to submit some progress reports required by the deal. Of course, nothing stops President Trump from continuing to reverse Obama Administration efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support renewable energy production, or encourage efficiency improvements. Presumably, the US will also renege on the remaining $2 billion of its promised $3 billion contribution (with more in the future) to the Green Climate Fund  meant to help less-developed nations deal with the consequences of climate change and invest in renewable energy.

Speculation about this decision has been rampant since the election in November, as the issue was not as simple as a candidate who has publicly rejected climate science wanting out of a climate agreement. Many within the Trump Administration, including Secretary of State and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, have argued for staying in the agreement, which was signed by nearly every country in the world. Most fossil fuel companies have at least publicly stated the same desire, including the (current) CEOs of Shell and Exxon.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we're back with a bunch of new deals and steals. Of note is a small gaming PC with a lot of power: now you can get a Lenovo IdeaCentre mini gaming PC, with a quad-core Core i7 processor, 4GB AMD RX 460 GPU, and a 2TB hard drive, for just $699. It measures just 15.5 x 10 x 12.5 inches, making it a gaming PC that packs a punch without taking up a lot of space.

Check out the rest of the deals below.

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Hori

Consider this your regularly scheduled reminder that Nintendo doesn't know what the heck it's doing with online multiplayer games.

Today's story comes from Hori, a longtime gaming peripheral maker best known for its "fighting stick" controllers. The company unveiled the world's first Nintendo Switch-compatible headset on Thursday morning, and it's a weird one. Wait, this headset needs a dongle to work? And a phone?

Enlarge / An Atlas V rocket is rolled out to the launch pad in March, 2016. (credit: NASA)

On May 15, SpaceX launched its heaviest payload ever to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a vantage point far above the Earth. Because the Inmarsat satellite weighed more than six tons, it was originally scheduled to launch on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. Back when the launch contract was signed in 2014, neither SpaceX nor Inmarsat anticipated the regular Falcon 9 rocket would have the capability to lift so much, so high.

However, since the Falcon 9 began regular flights in 2012, SpaceX has acted more like a startup company than a traditional aerospace company, making two or three major upgrades to the booster and dozens of smaller modifications designed to improve its performance. By doing so, SpaceX has essentially doubled the rocket's lift capacity. Partly as a result of this, the US military now allows SpaceX to bid for national security payload launches.

SpaceX has paid for these upgrades by leveraging private investment alongside revenues from government and commercial launch contracts to improve its products. This innovative approach to the aerospace business, including the pursuit of reusability, has upended the global launch market, and it has sent competitors such as the US-based United Launch Alliance (ULA) scrambling to compete on price.