Month: April 2021

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

When Edward Koll and his girlfriend, Jo Narkon, bought and moved into a new house in Draper, Virginia in late September 2020, they had every reason to think that Comcast Internet would be readily available.

They had done their due diligence before buying the house, plugging the address into the Comcast website to make sure it had cable Internet and contacting Comcast directly to make extra sure. Both the Comcast website's availability checker and a Comcast sales rep confirmed to them that the house had service.

But Comcast had given the couple false information because of an error in its coverage map, and it didn't tell the couple about this mistake until after they bought the house. That was over six months ago, and Koll and Narkon still don't have home Internet service.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

A newly discovered cryptomining worm is stepping up its targeting of Windows and Linux devices with a batch of new exploits and capabilities, a researcher said.

Research company Juniper started monitoring what it’s calling the Sysrv botnet in December. One of the botnet’s malware components was a worm that spread from one vulnerable device to another without requiring any user action. It did this by scanning the Internet for vulnerable devices and, when found, infecting them using a list of exploits that has increased over time.

The malware also included a cryptominer that uses infected devices to create the Monero digital currency. There was a separate binary file for each component.

Enlarge / Fairing catcher ship GO Ms. Tree leading the way into Port Canaveral. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann / Ars Technica)

Welcome to Edition 3.40 of the Rocket Report! There were fewer announcements in the realm of launch this week, but that doesn't mean we lack stories for this report. These include interesting developments on the international front, from the closure of a Russian space tourism country to some fairly serious ethical issues surrounding development of a spaceport in Brazil.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

ABL Space nabs a huge contract. Under terms of the block-buy agreement between ABL Space Systems and Lockheed, the aerospace giant will purchase "up to" 26 launches through 2026 and as many as 32 additional launches through 2029. If the terms are fulfilled, this would come to 58 launches over the next eight years for ABL Space. Not bad for a company that has yet to launch a rocket.