LastPass says employee’s home computer was hacked and corporate vault taken

Already smarting from a breach that stole customer vaults, LastPass has more bad news.

LastPass says employee’s home computer was hacked and corporate vault taken

Enlarge (credit: Leon Neal | Getty Images)

Already smarting from a breach that put partially encrypted login data into a threat actor’s hands, LastPass on Monday said that the same attacker hacked an employee’s home computer and obtained a decrypted vault available to only a handful of company developers.

Although an initial intrusion into LastPass ended on August 12, officials with the leading password manager said the threat actor “was actively engaged in a new series of reconnaissance, enumeration, and exfiltration activity” from August 12 to August 26. In the process, the unknown threat actor was able to steal valid credentials from a senior DevOps engineer and access the contents of a LastPass data vault. Among other things, the vault gave access to a shared cloud-storage environment that contained the encryption keys for customer vault backups stored in Amazon S3 buckets.

Another bombshell drops

“This was accomplished by targeting the DevOps engineer’s home computer and exploiting a vulnerable third-party media software package, which enabled remote code execution capability and allowed the threat actor to implant keylogger malware,” LastPass officials wrote. “The threat actor was able to capture the employee’s master password as it was entered, after the employee authenticated with MFA, and gain access to the DevOps engineer’s LastPass corporate vault.”

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OnePlus 11 Concept brings water cooling to a phone with questionable results

OnePlus hypes up “Active CryoFlux” but even its own benchmarks aren’t impressive.

The OnePlus 11 Concept was apparently assembled by tiny welding robots.

Enlarge / The OnePlus 11 Concept was apparently assembled by tiny welding robots. (credit: OnePlus)

It's Mobile World Congress this week, which means entering the wild world of concept phones. Usually, these are flexible display devices that will never see the light of day, but this year OnePlus has the "OnePlus 11 Concept" phone. This has a liquid cooling system called "Active CryoFlux." We will try to decipher this thing, but our first blazing red flag is that OnePlus does not go into much detail.

It's worth noting that OnePlus has made several concept phones, which have never really affected the company's consumer products. One phone put electrochromic glass in front of the camera lenses, rendering them invisible when they weren't being used. Another phone would change colors. Neither feature ever made it into a consumer phone.

OnePlus' press release says the system features "a piezoelectric ceramic micropump at its core, connected to pipelines sandwiched between an upper and lower diaphragm. The micropump takes up an area less than 0.2 cm², enabling cooling liquid to circulate around the pipelines without significantly increasing OnePlus 11 Concept’s weight and thickness."

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OnePlus 11 Concept brings water cooling to a phone with questionable results

OnePlus hypes up “Active CryoFlux” but even its own benchmarks aren’t impressive.

The OnePlus 11 Concept was apparently assembled by tiny welding robots.

Enlarge / The OnePlus 11 Concept was apparently assembled by tiny welding robots. (credit: OnePlus)

It's Mobile World Congress this week, which means entering the wild world of concept phones. Usually, these are flexible display devices that will never see the light of day, but this year OnePlus has the "OnePlus 11 Concept" phone. This has a liquid cooling system called "Active CryoFlux." We will try to decipher this thing, but our first blazing red flag is that OnePlus does not go into much detail.

It's worth noting that OnePlus has made several concept phones, which have never really affected the company's consumer products. One phone put electrochromic glass in front of the camera lenses, rendering them invisible when they weren't being used. Another phone would change colors. Neither feature ever made it into a consumer phone.

OnePlus' press release says the system features "a piezoelectric ceramic micropump at its core, connected to pipelines sandwiched between an upper and lower diaphragm. The micropump takes up an area less than 0.2 cm², enabling cooling liquid to circulate around the pipelines without significantly increasing OnePlus 11 Concept’s weight and thickness."

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More trepanation news: Evidence of brain surgery in Bronze Age Israel

Remains of one of two brothers found buried together showed signs of trepanation

Bioarchaeological context of this study

Enlarge / Two Bronze Age skeletons (brothers) were found at Tel Megiddo in Israel. One showed evidence of trepanation. (credit: Kalisher et al., 2023/PLoS ONE, CC-BY 4.0)

Just a couple of weeks ago, we reported that scientists had analyzed the skull of a medieval woman who once lived in central Italy and found evidence that she experienced at least two brain surgeries consistent with the practice of trepanation. Now a recent paper published last week in the journal PLoS ONE has reported evidence of trepanation in the remains of a man buried between 1550 and 1450 BCE at the Tel Megiddo archaeological site in Israel.

Cranial trepanation—the drilling of a hole in the head—is perhaps the oldest known example of skull surgery and one that is still practiced today, albeit rarely. It typically involves drilling or scraping a hole into the skull to expose the dura mater, the outermost of three layers of connective tissue, called meninges, that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord. Accidentally piercing that layer could result in infection or damage to the underlying blood vessels. The practice dates back 7,000 to 10,000 years, as evidenced by cave paintings and human remains. During the Middle Ages, trepanation was performed to treat such ailments as seizures and skull fractures.

In the case of the medieval woman's skull, an oval area in the center of the cross-shaped defect was evidence of a well-healed trepanation procedure. Metal surgical tools were probably used to make a cross-shaped incision to the top of a head, scraping away the scalp from the bone—a trepanation method that is historically well-documented—which could also explain the signs of inflammation and/or infection. The second surgery likely occurred shortly before the woman's death. It's one of the few archaeological pieces of evidence of trepanation being performed on early medieval women yet found, although why the woman in question was subjected to such a risky invasive surgical procedure remains speculative.

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More trepanation news: Evidence of brain surgery in Bronze Age Israel

Remains of one of two brothers found buried together showed signs of trepanation

Bioarchaeological context of this study

Enlarge / Two Bronze Age skeletons (brothers) were found at Tel Megiddo in Israel. One showed evidence of trepanation. (credit: Kalisher et al., 2023/PLoS ONE, CC-BY 4.0)

Just a couple of weeks ago, we reported that scientists had analyzed the skull of a medieval woman who once lived in central Italy and found evidence that she experienced at least two brain surgeries consistent with the practice of trepanation. Now a recent paper published last week in the journal PLoS ONE has reported evidence of trepanation in the remains of a man buried between 1550 and 1450 BCE at the Tel Megiddo archaeological site in Israel.

Cranial trepanation—the drilling of a hole in the head—is perhaps the oldest known example of skull surgery and one that is still practiced today, albeit rarely. It typically involves drilling or scraping a hole into the skull to expose the dura mater, the outermost of three layers of connective tissue, called meninges, that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord. Accidentally piercing that layer could result in infection or damage to the underlying blood vessels. The practice dates back 7,000 to 10,000 years, as evidenced by cave paintings and human remains. During the Middle Ages, trepanation was performed to treat such ailments as seizures and skull fractures.

In the case of the medieval woman's skull, an oval area in the center of the cross-shaped defect was evidence of a well-healed trepanation procedure. Metal surgical tools were probably used to make a cross-shaped incision to the top of a head, scraping away the scalp from the bone—a trepanation method that is historically well-documented—which could also explain the signs of inflammation and/or infection. The second surgery likely occurred shortly before the woman's death. It's one of the few archaeological pieces of evidence of trepanation being performed on early medieval women yet found, although why the woman in question was subjected to such a risky invasive surgical procedure remains speculative.

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Lilbits: Linux on Apple Silicon (updated)

Linux 6.2 was released last week and, among other things, it includes some initial support for Apple’s M1 series processors. That’s an important step toward allowing a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions to run on Macs released in the pa…

Linux 6.2 was released last week and, among other things, it includes some initial support for Apple’s M1 series processors. That’s an important step toward allowing a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions to run on Macs released in the past few years. But it’s still just a baby step. While there had been a widely-cited […]

The post Lilbits: Linux on Apple Silicon (updated) appeared first on Liliputing.

SpaceX unveils “V2 Mini” Starlink satellites with quadruple the capacity

V2 Mini outperforms first-gen satellites, but full-size V2 must wait for Starship.

A group of Starlink satellites assembled and ready for a launch.

Enlarge / SpaceX's V2 Mini Starlink satellites. (credit: SpaceX)

With Starlink speeds slowing due to a growing capacity crunch, SpaceX said a launch happening as soon as today will deploy the first "V2 Mini" satellites that provide four times more per-satellite capacity than earlier versions.

Starlink's second-generation satellites include the V2 Minis and the larger V2. The larger V2s are designed for the SpaceX Starship, which isn't quite ready to launch yet, but the V2 Minis are slimmed-down versions that can be deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket.

"The V2 Minis are smaller than the V2 satellites (hence the name) but don't let the name fool you," SpaceX said in a statement provided to Ars yesterday. "The V2 Minis include more advanced phased array antennas and the use of E-band for backhaul, which will enable Starlink to provide ~4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations."

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SpaceX unveils “V2 Mini” Starlink satellites with quadruple the capacity

V2 Mini outperforms first-gen satellites, but full-size V2 must wait for Starship.

A group of Starlink satellites assembled and ready for a launch.

Enlarge / SpaceX's V2 Mini Starlink satellites. (credit: SpaceX)

With Starlink speeds slowing due to a growing capacity crunch, SpaceX said a launch happening as soon as today will deploy the first "V2 Mini" satellites that provide four times more per-satellite capacity than earlier versions.

Starlink's second-generation satellites include the V2 Minis and the larger V2. The larger V2s are designed for the SpaceX Starship, which isn't quite ready to launch yet, but the V2 Minis are slimmed-down versions that can be deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket.

"The V2 Minis are smaller than the V2 satellites (hence the name) but don't let the name fool you," SpaceX said in a statement provided to Ars yesterday. "The V2 Minis include more advanced phased array antennas and the use of E-band for backhaul, which will enable Starlink to provide ~4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations."

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments