Month: May 2023

Enlarge

Smartphone malware sold to governments around the world can surreptitiously record voice calls and nearby audio, collect data from apps such as Signal and WhatsApp, and hide apps or prevent them from running upon device reboots, researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have found.

An analysis Talos published on Thursday provides the most detailed look yet at Predator, a piece of advanced spyware that can be used against Android and iOS mobile devices. Predator is developed by Cytrox, a company that Citizen Lab has said is part of an alliance called Intellexa, “a marketing label for a range of mercenary surveillance vendors that emerged in 2019.” Other companies belonging to the consortium include Nexa Technologies (formerly Amesys), WiSpear/Passitora Ltd., and Senpai.

Last year, researchers with Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which tracks cyberattacks carried out or funded by nation-states, reported that Predator had bundled five separate zero-day exploits in a single package and sold it to various government-backed actors. These buyers went on to use the package in three distinct campaigns. The researchers said Predator worked closely with a component known as Alien, which “lives inside multiple privileged processes and receives commands from Predator.” The commands included recording audio, adding digital certificates, and hiding apps.

Enlarge / Part of the system of reticulated tunnels (egress complex) of a mound of Macrotermes michaelseni termites from Namibia. (credit: D. Andréen)

The mounds that certain species of termites build above their nests have long been considered to be a kind of built-in natural climate control—an approach that has intrigued architects and engineers keen to design greener, more energy-efficient buildings mimicking those principles. There have been decades of research devoted to modeling just how these nests function. A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Materials offers new evidence favoring an integrated-system model in which the mound, the nest, and its tunnels function together much like a lung.

Perhaps the most famous example of the influence of termite mounds in architecture is the Eastgate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe. It is the country’s largest commercial and shopping complex, and yet it uses less than 10 percent of the energy consumed by a conventional building of its size because there is no central air conditioning and only a minimal heating system. Architect Mick Pearce famously based his design in the 1990s on the cooling and heating principles used in the region’s termite mounds, which serve as fungus farms for the termites. Fungus is their primary food source.

Conditions have to be just right for the fungus to flourish. So the termites must maintain a constant temperature of 87° F in an environment where the outdoor temperatures range from 35° F at night to 104° F during the day. Biologists have long suggested that they do this by constructing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout their mounds, which can be opened and closed during the day to keep the temperature inside constant. The Eastgate Building relies on a similar system of well-placed vents and solar panels.

Enlarge / HP sometimes bricks third-party ink and toner that's over 90 percent full, Imaging Technology Council claims. (credit: Getty)

HP printers have received a lot of flak historically and recently for invasive firmware updates that end up preventing customers from using ink with their printers. HP also encourages printer customers to sign up for HP+, a program that includes a free ink-subscription trial and irremovable firmware that allows HP to brick the ink when it sees fit.

Despite this, HP markets dozens of its printers with Dynamic Security and the optional HP+ feature as being in the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry, suggesting that these printers are built with the environment in mind and, more specifically, do not block third-party ink cartridges. Considering Dynamic Security and HP+ printers do exactly that, the International Imaging Technology Council (IITC) wants the General Electronics Council (GEC), which is in charge of the EPEAT registry, to revoke at least 101 HP printer models from the EPEAT registry, which HP has "made a mockery of."

Before we get into the IITC complaint sent May 22 to  GEC Senior Manager Katherine Larocque, we should note the IITC's obvious stakes in this. The nonprofit trade association was founded in 2000 and says it represents "toner and inkjet cartridge remanufacturers, component suppliers, and cartridge collectors in North America." So its members stand to lose a lot of money from tactics like Dynamic Security. The IITC already filed a complaint to the GEC about HP in 2019 for firmware blocking non-HP ink, but there didn't seem to be any noticeable results.

Enlarge / A long COVID patient sits with her daughter in her wheelchair while receiving a saline infusion at her Maryland home on Friday, May 27, 2022. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post)

Tens of millions of people worldwide are thought to have developed long-term symptoms and conditions in the wake of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But this sometimes-debilitating phenomenon, often called long COVID, remains a puzzle to researchers. What causes it? Who gets it? And, perhaps, the most maddening one: What is it?

Long COVID patients have reported a wide spectrum of more than 200 symptoms. Some are common, like loss of smell, while others are rarer, like tremors. Some patients have familiar constellations of symptoms, others seem to have idiosyncratic assortments.

Researchers hypothesize that long COVID may simply be an umbrella term for a collection of variable—and potentially overlapping—post-COVID conditions that may have different causes. Those causes might include autoimmunity, immune system dysregulation, organ injury, viral persistence, and intestinal microbiome imbalances (dysbiosis).