Month: February 2021

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Network security provider SonicWall said on Monday that hackers are exploiting a critical zeroday vulnerability in one of the firewalls it sells.

The security flaw resides in the Secure Mobile Access 100 series, SonicWall said in an advisory updated on Monday. The vulnerability, which affects SMA 100 firmware versions 10.x, isn’t slated to receive a fix until the end of Tuesday.

Monday’s update came a day after security firm NCC Group said on Twitter that it had detected “indiscriminate use of an exploit in the wild.” The NCC tweet referred to an earlier version of the SonicWall advisory that said its researchers had “identified a coordinated attack on its internal systems by highly sophisticated threat actors exploiting probable zero-day vulnerabilities on certain SonicWall secure remote access products.”

Enlarge / World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme Director Michael Ryan talks during a daily press briefing on COVID-19 virus at the WHO headquaters in Geneva on March 11, 2020. (credit: Getty | Fabrice Coffrini)

An international team of scientific experts is on the ground in Wuhan, China, finally making progress in its long-sought attempt to understand how the pandemic coronavirus first jumped from animals to humans. But the tedious scientific investigation has become a media frenzy there, and it continues to be plagued by conspiracy theories and thorny international politics.

On Monday, a top official with the World Health Organization had clearly had enough, scolding skeptics and essentially telling conspiracy theorists to show hard evidence or be quiet.

Members of the 15-person team arrived in Wuhan last month and finished their mandatory two-week quarantine last Thursday. Since then, they have made several trips around Wuhan—swarmed by media—including a visit to the hospital that treated the first known COVID-19 cases and the Huanan seafood market, where authorities linked many of the earliest cases. The team also plans to meet with COVID-19 survivors and visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is the center of much speculation and many conspiracy theories that the pandemic virus was engineered and/or accidentally released from a laboratory.

Enlarge / We'll be getting more Wakanda-centric stories thanks to a new development deal between Black Panther director Ryan Coogler and The Walt Disney Company. (credit: Marvel/Disney)

Following on the success of The Mandalorian and WandaVision on Disney+, The Walt Disney Company has tapped Black Panther director Ryan Coogler to develop an as-yet-untitled new series for the streamer focusing on the fictional nation of Wakanda. Deadline Hollywood reports that the planned series is part of an exclusive five-year deal between Coogler's Proximity Media production company and the Mouse House to develop the new TV series, including shows for other divisions of the company.

"Ryan Coogler is a singular storyteller whose vision and range have made him one of the standout filmmakers of his generation," said Bob Iger, executive chairman of The Walt Disney Company, in a statement. "With Black Panther, Ryan brought a groundbreaking story and iconic characters to life in a real, meaningful and memorable way, creating a watershed cultural moment. We're thrilled to strengthen our relationship and look forward to telling more great stories with Ryan and his team."

Coogler earned praise for his films Fruitvale Station and Creed before helming Black Panther. The film grossed a whopping $1.3 billion worldwide—the highest-grossing film by a Black director and the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time—and became the first MCU movie to win multiple Oscars (Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design). It was nominated for Best Picture, although it didn't win.

Enlarge / The update prompt for macOS Big Sur 11.2. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Today, Apple pushed out a small update to its macOS 11 Big Sur operating system for supported Mac laptops and desktops. Labeled Big Sur 11.2, the update "improves Bluetooth reliability" and fixes a number of bugs.

Those bugs include one widely reported issue with the Mac mini in which external displays would show only a black screen when using an HDMI-to-DVI converter. Also, it fixes an issue where the System Preferences panel would not unlock after a user enters their password in some cases, as well as a bug that sometimes prevented changes made to Apple ProRAW images from saving.

These are the release notes that accompany the macOS update: