Month: April 2020

Enlarge / A drive-through COVID-19 testing site operated by Omni Healthcare in Melbourne, Fla. on April 8. (credit: Paul Hennessy | Echoes Wire | Barcroft Media | Getty Images)

UPDATE, April 10: Late yesterday the administration reversed course on its controversial plan to pull federal funding from drive-through community-based COVID-19 testing centers in several states.

Instead, the states can choose whether to continue to receive federal funding and support or take over operations themselves, federal officials said.

After news about the potential closure of many of the 41 community-based testing centers circulated yesterday, a bipartisan group of members of Congress wrote to Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, asking the agency to continue funding the program.

Enlarge / A Long March 3B rocket lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in 2018. (credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The Long March 3B rocket is one of China's oldest active and most reliable boosters, with more than five dozen successful launches. On Thursday, however, the rocket failed when it attempted to launch an Indonesian telecommunications satellite, Nusantara Dua, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

Although ground-based observations showed the first and second stages of the rocket performing nominally, apparently something went wrong with the final stage needed for a boost into geostationary transfer orbit. Chinese media reports indicate that the third stage failed due to unspecified reasons and that the 5.5-ton satellite fell back into Earth's atmosphere.

This is China's second failure in eight launch attempts this year, and the second in less than a month. On March 16, the launch of the relatively new Long March 7A failed to reach orbit after lifting off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site.

Enlarge (credit: Martin Falbisoner / Wikimedia Commons)

The US Senate has become the latest organization to tell its members not to use Zoom because of concerns about data security on the video conferencing platform that has boomed in popularity during the coronavirus crisis.

The Senate sergeant at arms has warned all senators against using the service, according to three people briefed on the advice.

One person who had seen the Senate warning said it told each senator’s office to find an alternative platform to use for remote working while many parts of the US remain in lockdown. But the person added it had stopped short of officially banning the company’s products.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

A newly discovered botnet that preys on home routers, video recorders, and other network-connected devices is one of the most advanced Internet-of-things platforms ever seen, researchers said on Wednesday. Its list of advanced features includes the ability to disguise malicious traffic as benign, maintain persistence, and infect devices that run on at least 12 different CPUs.

Researchers from antivirus provider Bitdefender described the so-called dark_nexus as a “new IoT botnet packing new features and capabilities that put to shame most IoT botnets and malware that we’ve seen.” In the three months that Bitdefender has tracked it, dark_nexus has undergone 30 version updates, as its developer has steadily added more features and capabilities.

Significantly more potent

The malware has infected at least 1,372 devices, which include video recorders, thermal cameras, and home and small office routers made by Dasan, Zhone, Dlink, and ASUS. Researchers expect more device models to be affected as dark_nexus development continues.