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Enlarge / A screenshot from the latest version of CryptXXX (credit: SentinelOne)

Whoever said crime doesn't pay didn't know about the booming ransomware market. A case in point, the latest version of the scourge known as CryptXXX, which raked in more than $45,000 in less than three weeks.

Over the past few months, CryptXXX developers have gone back and forth with security researchers. The whitehats from Kaspersky Lab provided a free tool that allowed victims to decrypt their precious data without paying the ransom, which typically reaches $500 or more. Then, CryptXXX developers would tweak their code to defeat the get-out-of-jail decryptor. The researchers would regain the upper hand by exploiting another weakness and so on.

Earlier this month, the developers released a new CryptXXX variant that to date still has no decryptor available. Between June 4 and June 21, according to a blog post published Monday by security firm SentinelOne, the Bitcoin address associated with the new version had received 70 bitcoins, which at current prices is valued at around $45,228. The figure doesn't include revenue generated from previous campaigns.

(credit: Samuel King Jr.)

Firefighters working to contain a wildfire in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California were temporarily thwarted this weekend when pilots for the Monrovia Fire Department (MFD) spotted a few private drones in their path. For low-flying fire-fighting planes carrying fire retardant and smoke jumpers, an errant drone could mean life or death for the pilot and any crew. As such, the fire department decided to temporarily ground all aircraft on Saturday morning.

That decision can be a frustrating one for firefighters and residents of a fire-affected area, because there’s always the potential that the fire could burn out of control without aircraft flying in firefighters and equipment. The Monrovia Fire Department acknowledged this situation in a post this weekend.

“It is vitally important to note… fire officials cannot deploy firefighting aircraft when private individuals are flying drones in the fire response locations," the MFD wrote. "Fortunately for us here locally, the fire was more fully contained when we had to suspend air operations yesterday, however, these types of disruptions are extremely dangerous to firefighting personnel and can cause severe disruptions to the response effort.”

A migraine is one of the most common health issues worldwide, affecting up to one in five people. But the mechanisms that drive migraines aren’t well understood. In fact, doctors and scientists are still trying to figure out if migraine is primarily a vascular or a neurological disorder.  A new genome-wide association study published in Nature Genetics suggests that a migraine may be primarily stem from problems with the blood supply.

The data in this paper comes from a meta-analysis of 22 genome-wide association studies, a combined dataset of over 35,000 migraine cases and even more controls. The primary meta-analysis found associations between migraines and 38 independent genomic regions, 34 of which were associated with migraines for the first time by this study.

When the authors characterized the genes near these associated loci, they found that a number of them were previously associated with vascular disease. Others are involved in smooth muscle contraction (smooth muscle lines larger blood vessels) and regulation of vascular tone. Some of these genes were also associated with arterial functioning.

Enlarge / Say it with me: FINALLY. (credit: HBO)

Spoiler alert: The below contains heavy spoilers for the Game of Thrones season six finale and the entire series to date. If you haven’t watched and want to go in fresh, stop reading now.

Think back to the very first scene of Game of Thrones. It wasn't about Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen or Tyrion Lannister, though we meet all of these characters in the show's opening hour. It's about a small group of men from the Night's Watch, barely named and swiftly dispatched, who encounter something so terrible that they'd rather be executed than face it. It's the stuff of fairy tales and nightmares, it hates mankind, and it's coming.

The confrontation between humanity and the eldritch terrors from north of the Wall has been Game of Thrones' endgame since that very first scene, but the six years of show since have moved toward that confrontation in fits and starts. At its best, the series draws us in completely, allowing us to root for multiple people on multiple sides of a conflict even when they change sides. Never has a show so effortlessly mastered the heel-face turn. At its worst, Game of Thrones meanders, too absorbed in the 8,000 little stories it's trying to tell to meaningfully advance that Big Story.

Isolated DNA in tubes. (credit: Patrick Alexander / flickr)

The US Supreme Court has taken up its next patent case, which may well lead to another decision sharply overturning a ruling by the nation's top patent court.

Here's how the case made it to the high court: Life Technologies Corporation, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, manufactures a genetic testing kit in the United Kingdom. The company sells this product worldwide. Life Tech made one element of the kit, called a Taq polymerase, in the United States and then shipped it to the UK to combine with the larger product.

In 2010, Promega sued Life Technologies for patent infringement and won a jury verdict awarding $52 million. Promega is a California biotech company that says its patent covers Life Technologies’ genetic testing kit. The judge overturned the decision after trial, however, finding merely shipping the polymerase from the US wasn't enough to warrant such a result. Promega took its case to the Federal Circuit, which hears all US patent appeals. A split Federal Circuit panel sided with Promega, reinstating the $52 million verdict. Today, the Supreme Court said they will review the case at the request (PDF) of Life Technologies.

(credit: Jayson Trevino)

The federal government is taking another step it says would make the US homeland safer from terrorism. US border authorities are proposing that millions of tourists entering the country each year reveal their social media identities.

The proposal from US Customs and Border Protection, announced last week in the Federal Register, would add a line to the online or paper form that US-bound visitors must fill out if they don't have a visa and plan on staying for up to 90 days for vacation, business, or other affairs. The agency says travelers coming to the US under the Visa Waiver Program won't be forced to disclose their social media handles, but leaving it blank obviously could raise red flags.

Here's what will be asked: "Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier." This field doesn't call for additional information such as passwords, but it's likely to yield many if applicants aren't paying attention and overshare.

(credit: Hawaii Invasive Species Council)

Chameleons have the seemingly impossible ability to capture their prey while remaining motionless simply through the flick of their tongue. This sensationalized predatory ability depends in part on a sophisticated ballistic projection of the chameleon’s tongue. The chameleon is able to extend its tongue as far as two body lengths away during a predatory attack, sending it towards its victim using accelerations that range from 300 to 1500 m/s².

Given the forces involved, what happens next is a bit surprising: the victim sticks to the tongue, even in cases where the prey is up to 30 percent of the chameleon's own body weight. Recently, a team of scientists investigated how this works.

It all depends on extremely viscous spit. The team characterized the viscosity of the mucus that's present on the chameleon's tongue by rolling small steel beads over a thin mucus film. During the rolling, the viscous forces of the mucus produce a drag force on the beads, which can be used to indirectly measure the viscosity. The scientists determined that the mucus viscosity (0.4 ± 0.1 Pa-s) is roughly 400 times larger than that of human saliva (~10^-3 Pa-s).