Month: August 2019

Enlarge (credit: Álvaro Ibáñez)

Hackers exploited more than a dozen iOS vulnerabilities—most of them unpatched zerodays—in a two-year campaign that stole photos, emails, log-in credentials, and more from iPhones and iPads, researchers from Google’s Project Zero said.

The attacks were waged from a small collection of hacked websites that used the exploits to indiscriminately attack every iOS device that visited. Attacks against 14 separate vulnerabilities were packaged into five separate exploit chains that gave the attackers the ability to compromise up-to-date devices over a period of more than two years. An analysis of the well-written exploit chains shows they were likely developed contemporaneously with the exploited iOS versions, which spanned from iOS iOS 10.0.1 released in September 2016 to 12.1.2 issued last December.

Real-time monitoring of entire populations

“I shan't get into a discussion of whether these exploits cost $1 million, $2 million, or $20 million,” Project Zero researcher Ian Beer wrote in a deep-dive post analyzing the exploits and the malware they installed. “I will instead suggest that all of those price tags seem low for the capability to target and monitor the private activities of entire populations in real time.”

Enlarge / I guess it's not classified anymore. (credit: National Reconnaissance Office?)

President Donald Trump posted a photo today via Twitter of Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center in northern Iran, showing the damage done to the facility by the explosion of what appears to have been a Safir rocket during launch. The rocket was apparently being used in the attempted launch of Iran's Nahid-1 satellite.

Commercial satellite imagery from Planet Labs made available this morning showed a plume of smoke rising from the space center's launch pad. But the photo posted by President Trump was a much higher-resolution, black and white photo—a resolution that suggested it came from a National Reconnaissance Office satellite.

The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One. pic.twitter.com/z0iDj2L0Y3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019

While the posted photo was obviously not at full resolution—and was partially obscured by the reflection from the flash for the phone camera used to capture it—it showed details clearly at well below a meter's resolution. NRO satellites are known to have a resolution in approximately the tenth of a meter range, like the imagery shared in the Twitter post.

Enlarge / A map showing the approximate location of the 405 police departments working with Ring as of August 30, 2019 (credit: Ring)

Ring, Amazon's home security camera and surveillance company, has since 2018 rapidly expanded its business by partnering with more than 400 police and sheriff departments nationwide. Amid a growing chorus of privacy complaints and media reports about these partnerships, Ring has repeatedly promised explicitly that police have no way of knowing details of who has the cameras installed and what residents are—or aren't—willing to share their footage. New reports, however, indicate that police departments may be receiving more data about Ring users in their jurisdictions than previously disclosed.

Gizmodo reports today that documents it obtained from a Florida police department included emails from Ring "about the number of times residents had refused police access to their cameras or ignored their requests altogether."

Owners of Ring devices can connect them to an app called Neighbors, which is also available for the general public to use. The app collects "crime reports" from participants, who can also choose to upload images and video either directly from their Ring devices or uploaded from other sources.

Parks Canada has released new images from the first underwater exploration of the shipwreck of the HMS Terror. The ongoing study of the shipwreck and its artifacts should shed more light on Captain Sir John S. Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition to cross the Northwest Passage in 1846. Franklin's two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, became icebound in the Victoria Strait, and all 129 crew members ultimately died. It's been an enduring mystery that has captured imaginations ever since. Novelist Dan Simmons immortalized the expedition in his 2007 horror novel, The Terror, which was later adapted into an anthology TV series for AMC in 2018. (Season 2 of the TV show, set in the Japanese internment camps of World War II, is currently airing.)

The Terror was actually a repurposed warship, having survived the War of 1812 among other skirmishes. The expedition set sail on May 19, 1824 and was last seen in July 1845 in Baffin Bay by the captains of two whaling ships. Historians have managed to piece together a reasonably credible rough account of what happened. The crew spent the winter of 1845-1846 on Beechey Island, where the graves of three crew members were found. When the weather cleared, the expedition sailed into the Victoria Strait before getting trapped in the ice off King William Island in September 1846. Franklin himself died on June 11, 1847, per a surviving note dated the following April. It's believed that everyone else died while encamped for the winter, or while attempting to walk back to civilization.

There have been a number of studies examining the remains recovered from the graves and their vicinity on Beechey Island, as well as from King William Island. The current consensus is that pneumonia, tuberculosis, and a zinc deficiency contributed to the high death toll, along with hypothermia and starvation/malnutrition. There were even hints of cannibalism in the form of cut marks on human bones. Nobody successfully traversed the Northwest Passage until Roald Amundsen's expedition from 1903 to 1906. Amundsen avoided Franklin's doomed fate by traveling along the east coast of King William Island, rather than its west side.

Enlarge / A scene from the Copenhagen Pride Parade. (credit: Ole Jensen/Getty Images)

Homosexuality is widespread among animals, and it's present in every culture we've looked at. All of which suggests that it's in some way innate to the human species. But figuring out what "innate" means is a real challenge when it comes to a complicated suite of behaviors like sexuality—behaviors that are also heavily influenced by culture.

Studies of twins have suggested that genetics can influence homosexual behavior, accounting for roughly 20% to 30% of its frequency. But attempts to find specific genes that mediate this influence have come up empty. Now, an absolutely enormous study has found a number of genetic sites linked to homosexual behavior. But collectively, they account for a tiny amount of the total genetic effect, and their influence is complicated: different in men and women, and different even across the spectrum of sexual attraction.

Very big data

There are a number of human traits that have a clear genetic influence but aren't clearly tied to any single gene. Height is a good example. Height is influenced by a large number of genes, each of which on its own has only a tiny effect—there's no "tall gene." And, obviously, environmental influences like nutrition are also strong influences on height and can completely swamp the impact of genetics.

Enlarge / Night in the Woods gets extremely real despite its cartoonish look.

A physical release for indie darling Night in the Woods has been put on hold as two of the game's creators are cutting ties with a third following allegations of abuse and sexual assault.

"This week, allegations of past abuse have come to light regarding Alec Holowka, who was coder, composer, and co-designer on Night In The Woods," developer Scott Benson wrote in a thread on the game's Twitter account. "We take such allegations seriously as a team. As a result and after some agonizing consideration, we are cutting ties with Alec."

Earlier in the week, indie developer Zoe Quinn publicly accused Holowka of a pattern of assault, isolation, and abuse while the two were living together in Winnipeg. Holowka has not publicly responded to the allegations.

You can check out any time you'd like, but you can never... well, you know the song. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

A municipal broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado went live for new customers today, less than two years after the city's voters approved the network despite a cable industry-led campaign against it.

"Finally, a broadband provider you can trust," the city-run broadband service's website says in a pointed message about the Comcast cable and CenturyLink DSL services that are the city's primary broadband networks.

Fort Collins Connexion, the new fiber-to-the-home municipal option, costs $59.95 a month for 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds, with no data caps, contracts, or installation fees. There's a $15 monthly add-on fee to cover Wi-Fi, but customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own router. Fort Collins Connexion also offers home phone service, and it plans to add TV service later on.