Month: October 2022

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)

Google Play has given the boot to 16 apps with more than 20 million combined installations after researchers detected malicious activity that could cause the Android devices they ran on to drain batteries faster and use more data than normal.

The apps provided legitimate functions, including flashlight, camera, QR reading, and measurement conversions, security firm McAfee said on Wednesday. When opened, however, the apps surreptitiously downloaded additional code that caused them to perform ad fraud. From then on, infected devices received messages through the Google-owned Firebase Cloud Messaging platform that instructed them to open specific web pages in the background and select links to artificially inflate the number of clicks ads received.

“Mainly, it is visiting websites which are delivered by FCM message and browsing them successively in the background while mimicking user’s behavior,” McAfee’s SangRyol Ryu wrote. “This may cause heavy network traffic and consume power without user awareness during the time it generates profit for the threat actor behind this malware.”

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)

Google Play has given the boot to 16 apps with more than 20 million combined installations after researchers detected malicious activity that could cause the Android devices they ran on to drain batteries faster and use more data than normal.

The apps provided legitimate functions, including flashlight, camera, QR reading, and measurement conversions, security firm McAfee said on Wednesday. When opened, however, the apps surreptitiously downloaded additional code that caused them to perform ad fraud. From then on, infected devices received messages through the Google-owned Firebase Cloud Messaging platform that instructed them to open specific web pages in the background and select links to artificially inflate the number of clicks ads received.

“Mainly, it is visiting websites which are delivered by FCM message and browsing them successively in the background while mimicking user’s behavior,” McAfee’s SangRyol Ryu wrote. “This may cause heavy network traffic and consume power without user awareness during the time it generates profit for the threat actor behind this malware.”

Enlarge / Home security cameras are some of the first devices to be considered for a security “nutrition label” that could launch in spring 2023. (credit: Getty Images)

The White House issued a statement today that said, essentially, it hosted a big meeting on Wednesday, with big names, and that some kind of security label for smart devices will come of it in spring 2023. Here’s a good deal more on what happened, and what’s likely to come out of it.

One of the top-level recommendations of the US Cyberspace Solarium Commission, named for the Eisenhower administration’s drive to rethink Cold War strategy, in its March 2020 report was to, “Establish a national cybersecurity certification and labeling authority.” A “non-profit, non-governmental organization” will become a labeling authority for at least five years, tagging products based on the consensus of the departments of Commerce and Homeland Security, and “experts from the federal government, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector.”

And that’s about who showed up, according to the White House. Amazon, Comcast, Google, Intel, LG, Samsung, Sony, and other private entities showed up. So did the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the consortium behind Matter, along with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Consumer Reports, and the Consumer Technology Association, CTIA, and National Retail Federation lobbying groups. Add in just about every security-touching government agency, and you’ve got the panel the Solarium Commission recommended.

Multispectral imaging revealed hidden original text from St. Catherine's Monastery over the top of faint tracings on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus palimpsest. (credit: Museum of the Bible/Keith T. Knox/Emanuel Zingg)

The Greek astronomer Hipparchus is often called the "father of astronomy." He's credited with discovering the Earth's precession (how it wobbles on its axis), and calculating the motions of the Sun and Moon, among other achievements. Hipparchus was also believed to be compiling a star catalog—perhaps the earliest known attempt to map the night sky to date—sometime between 162 and 127 BCE, based on references in historical texts.

Scholars have been searching for that catalog for centuries. Now, thanks to a technique called multispectral imaging, they have found what seems to be the first known Greek remnants of Hipparchus' star catalog. It was hidden beneath Christian texts on medieval parchment, according to a new paper published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

Multispectral imaging is a method that takes visible images in blue, green, and red and combines them with an infrared image and an X-ray image of an object. This can reveal minute hints of pigment, as well as hidden drawings or writings underneath various layers of paint or ink. For instance, researchers have previously used the technique to reveal hidden text on four Dead Sea Scroll fragments previously believed to be blank. And last year, Swiss scientists used multispectral imaging to reconstruct photographic plates created by French physicist Gabriel Lippmann, who pioneered color photography and snagged the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics for his efforts. The method corrected for distortions of color that occurred as a result of Lippmann's technique.

Enlarge / The palm of this patient’s left hand exhibited a brown discolored, irregularly shaped patch of skin, which had been diagnosed as a case of tinea nigra, caused by the fungus Hortaea werneckii. (credit: CDC | Dr. Lucille K. Georg)

If your palms are a tad sweaty, it might be a good idea to go wash them now, before reading further.

A 19-year-old university student in Philadelphia had a surprising firsthand encounter with rare, tropical black fungus, which was found sprouting into a large, dark circle in the palm of her hand. Her case was reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The dark mark at hand is called tinea nigra, a very uncommon, superficial fungal infection that typically strikes people in humid, tropical, or subtropical coastal areas—and often people in those areas with particularly sweaty palms. The fungus behind nearly all cases is Hortaea werneckii, a warm-dwelling, salt-loving yeast-like fungus that lives in the environment and produces a dark pigment. When grown in petri dishes in labs, H. werneckii forms creamy, stark black yeast-like colonies that eventually become filamentous.

Enlarge / US court (not pictured) rules that software cannot be registered as a patent "inventor." (credit: Ars Technica)

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that AI software cannot be a registered inventor of a US patent, Reuters reports, though the issue could be subject to further appeal.

The legal challenge came from Dr. Stephen Thaler, who filed two patent applications naming an AI program called "DABUS" as the inventor in 2019. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) denied the patents, and the District Court agreed with that finding after an appeal. Thaler appealed again in August 2022 over whether an AI can qualify as an "inventor" under US patent law. In response, the court ruled that an inventor must be a "natural person."

The key rationale for the recent denial stems from the definition of "inventor" in the Patent Act, which states the inventor must be an "individual." The Court of Appeals cited the Supreme Court as defining an "individual" as a human being, according to Reuters. That rules out machines, animals, and software such as Thaler's "DABUS" as being defined as the inventor of a US patent.

Enlarge / The GMC Sierra EV will be the brand's third EV after the Hummer EV truck and SUV. (credit: GMC)

In January, Chevrolet showed off its first fully electric pickup truck, the 2024 Silverado EV. And on Thursday it was the turn of General Motors' stablemate GMC, which opened the order books for its new Sierra EV, which will arrive in dealerships in early 2024. Like the Silverado and the GMC Hummer EV, the Sierra EV uses GM's Ultium Drive motors and Ultium batteries, as well as GM tech like Super Cruise.

It's no surprise that's there's a family resemblance to the Silverado EV, although to my eyes GMC's nose treatment looks a little more successful—definitely a little more futuristic. It looks like quite a versatile pickup, with a big locking frunk, GMC's clever multi position tailgate, and a midgate between the cabin and the truck bed like the old Avalanche and Escalade EXT trucks.

You can carry extra-long cargo thanks to the midgate. (credit: GMC)

As we've come to expect now, the first trucks off the line will be the most profit-laden for GMC; fully loaded Denali Edition 1s with an estimated range of 400 miles (640 km). That means a battery pack somewhat near in size to the Hummer EV—GMC is not giving out those specifics now—and helps explain an msrp of $107,000.