Month: December 2020

Enlarge / Vials with COVID-19 Vaccine labels showing logos of pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German biotechnology company d BioNTech. (credit: Getty | Photonews)

The very first doses of any approved COVID-19 vaccine should go to both front-line healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities, a committee of expert advisors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in an emergency meeting Tuesday evening.

The committee’s recommendation now moves to CDC director Robert Redfield for approval before it becomes official federal guidance. And, ultimately, states will make their own final decisions on how to distribute the first coveted shipments of vaccine vials.

Still, the committee—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—has for decades set such vaccine policy recommendations and states are likely eager to have its guidance settled as they try to finalize their plans. States have only until this coming Friday, December 4, to place their first vaccine orders with the federal government. The orders will determine which facilities in each state will get vaccine shipments and how much vaccine each facility will receive out of their state's limited allotment.

Enlarge / That's a lot of screen. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device—over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable—meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one near-by device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed.

This Wi-Fi packet of death exploit was devised by Ian Beer, a researcher at Project Zero, Google’s vulnerability research arm. In a 30,000-word post published on Tuesday afternoon, Beer described the vulnerability and the proof-of-concept exploit he spent six months developing single handedly. Almost immediately, fellow security researchers took notice.

Beware of dodgy Wi-Fi packets

“This is a fantastic piece of work,” Chris Evans, a semi-retired security researcher and executive and the founder of Project Zero, said in an interview. “It really is pretty serious. The fact you don’t have to really interact with your phone for this to be set off on you is really quite scary. This attack is just you’re walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets.”