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Enlarge (credit: Tavis Ormandy)

The Chrome browser extension for Cisco Systems WebEx communications and collaboration service was just updated to fix a vulnerability that leaves all 20 million users susceptible to drive-by attacks that can be carried out by just about any website they visit.

A combination of factors makes the vulnerabilities among the most severe in recent memory. First, WebEx is largely used in enterprise environments, which typically have the most to lose. Second, once a vulnerable user visits a site, it's trivial for anyone with control of it to execute malicious code with little sign anything is amiss. The vulnerability and the resulting patch were disclosed in a blog post published Monday by Tavis Ormandy, a researcher with Google's Project Zero security disclosure service.

Martijn Grooten, a security researcher for Virus Bulletin, told Ars:

Enlarge / The crew of Apollo 1 crosses the gantry to the spacecraft on the day of the fire, Jan. 27, 1967. (credit: NASA)

On a gray January afternoon in Houston, Walt Cunningham leaned into his Eames Lounge Chair and clasped his hands behind his head, the better to try and bend his thoughts back across five decades. Floor-to-ceiling windows let in a dull light that outlined Cunningham; it was a gloomy backdrop that mirrored the Apollo astronaut’s melancholy mood.

As a backup crew member for the initial Apollo mission, Cunningham recalled clambering into the first Apollo capsule on Jan. 26, 1967 for some pre-flight work. All had gone well, and no one thought the next day’s test, when the capsule would rely on its own internal power for the first time, would prove fatal. “We always expected that we’d lose at least one mission before we landed on the Moon, because of how far we were reaching out,” he said. “But we didn’t expect it to be on the ground.”

The Apollo astronauts, most of them cocksure test pilots, were accustomed to risk. In those early days as NASA invented spaceflight on the fly, all of the vehicles had flaws. The early astronauts trusted that they could handle any situation that came their way. “Rightly or wrongly, we thought we were going to be good enough to compensate for whatever it was,” Cunningham explained.

(credit: Fox61)

A Connecticut veteran who was treasurer at both an American Legion and VFW post was sentenced Friday to 2.5 years in prison. Local media said Frederick Brown, 72, of Mansfield, spent $96,000 on Internet porn over a three-year period.

According to local media, Brown stopped pilfering funds after realizing the veterans' posts were running out of cash. He stole as much as $144,000 in all. Local media said the defendant got "sucked in" to viewing live online pornography in which women became more provocative when viewers tipped more online tokens.

"Mr. Brown said that he basically got 'sucked in' and continued to do it because it was fun," according to a warrant. "Mr. Brown stopped... buying tokens in September 2014 because he started running out of money, and he was worried that someone else in the post would find out."

Enlarge (credit: Alan Levine/Flickr)

The Chicago law firm that became synonymous with "patent troll"-type litigation is shutting down, following the death of founding partner Raymond Niro.

The remaining partners of the Niro Law Firm are shuttering the firm, according to a report in Crain's Chicago Business. A core group, including Niro's son Dean Niro, will launch a new firm called Vitale Vickrey Niro & Gasey.

"We wanted a new start," said Paul Vickrey, who became Niro Law's managing partner after Ray Niro passed away in September of last year. "The Niro firm has been synonymous with patent litigation, and a group of us wanted a new firm with a broader focus."

Enlarge / Datacenters are mostly filled with racks of computers and network cables. (credit: Sean Ellis)

Microsoft UK hosted an online event to discuss the impact of the UK's likely departure from the European Union on the tech industry. The event was spotted by OnMSFT.

The company currently has two large datacenters in the UK, and it is expanding these in response to vigorous demand for cloud services. But Brexit could throw a spanner in the works. Owen Larter, Microsoft's UK Government Affairs Manager, said that if import tariffs were imposed on the UK—one likely consequence of the UK leaving the EU's single market and customs union—then the company would have to reconsider.

Larter said that the company's servers are built both in China and Eastern Europe. Presently, the devices assembled within the EU incur no tariffs on being brought into the UK. But, if that changes and significant import tariffs are imposed on those machines, Larter said the firm might instead build out its European datacenters to avoid those extra costs.

Enlarge (credit: CDC)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly and quietly canceled a scientific conference on climate change and health. According to E&E News reports, the conference was originally scheduled for February.

The conference had been in the works for months, and it was intended to bring experts and stakeholders together to discuss the latest evidence of and solutions to health risks posed by climate change. But according to E&E, the CDC suddenly canceled the summit shortly after Donald Trump’s election. The agency notified speakers and participants in a terse email. The agency gave no explanation. The email noted that the summit may be rescheduled for later in the year.

Former CDC officials and conference speakers were quick to draw political connections. They noted that President Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has vowed to dismantle “harmful and unnecessary” climate change policies.

Enlarge (credit: NASA/NordForsk)

The Earth's climate system moves slowly, since the atmosphere and oceans take time to reach new equilibria. As a result, there are some questions about the climate where it's much easier to provide an answer for a thousand years from now than it is for, say, the next hundred years. When we look at past changes in sea level, for example, the planet’s ice may take thousands of years to come to equilibrium. But we can use those views of the past as a preview of what's in store for us.

During the previous break between glacial periods, about 120,000 years ago, sea level was around six to nine meters (20 to 30 feet) higher than it is today, as the cycles in Earth’s orbit that drive the “ice ages” were in a particularly warm phase then. But working out precisely how warm that world was compared to the present day has been difficult. Have we already reached that temperature because of human-driven warming, or are we still a few degrees off from that? Estimates based on natural climate records have differed, which makes it hard to say how much sea level rise we’re committing ourselves to.

A group of researchers led by Jeremy Hoffman at Oregon State University compiled a large array of temperature records from seafloor sediment cores around the world to calculate the best possible average.