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(credit: Cao et al.)

Computer scientists have discovered a serious Internet vulnerability that allows attackers to terminate connections between virtually any two parties and, if the connections aren't encrypted, inject malicious code or content into the parties' communications.

The vulnerability resides in the design and implementation of RFC 5961, a relatively new Internet standard that's intended to prevent certain classes of hacking attacks. In fact, the protocol is designed in a way that it can easily open Internet users to so-called blind off-path attacks, in which hackers anywhere on the Internet can detect when any two parties are communicating over an active transmission control protocol connection. Attackers can go on to exploit the flaw to shut down the connection, inject malicious code or content into unencrypted data streams, and possibly degrade privacy guarantees provided by the Tor anonymity network.

At the 25th Usenix Security Symposium on Wednesday, researchers with the University of California at Riverside and the US Army Research Laboratory will demonstrate a proof-of-concept exploit that allows them to inject content into an otherwise legitimate USA Today page that asks viewers to enter their e-mail and passwords. The malicious, off-site JavaScript code attack is possible because the vulnerable USA Today pages aren't encrypted. Even if they were protected, attackers could still terminate the connection. Similar attacks work against a variety of other unidentified sites and services, as long as they have long-lived connections that give hackers enough time—roughly 60 seconds—to carry out the attack.

(credit: Google Maps)

Ever since James and Theresa Arnold moved into their rented 623-acre farm in Butler County, Kansas, in March 2011, they have seen “countless” law enforcement officials and individuals turning up at their farm day and night looking for links to alleged theft and other supposed crime. All of these people are arriving because of a rounding error on a GPS location, which wrongly points people to their farm.

In their lawsuit filed against MaxMind, the IP mapping firm, the Arnolds allege:

The following events appeared to originate at the residence and brought trespassers and/or law enforcement to the plaintiffs’ home at all hours of the night and day: stolen cars, fraud related to tax returns and bitcoin, stolen credit cards, suicide calls, private investigators, stolen social media accounts, fund raising events, and numerous other events.

James Arnold has even been “reported as holding girls at the residence for the purpose of making pornographic films.”

(credit: FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission has lost in an attempt to preempt state laws that restrict the growth of municipal broadband networks.

The FCC in February 2015 voted to block laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that prevent municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories. The FCC, led by Chairman Tom Wheeler, claimed it could preempt the laws because Congress authorizes the commission to promote telecom competition by removing barriers to investment.

But this was a risky legal argument, as the FCC has no specific authority to overturn state laws. Officials in both states appealed the FCC decision, and today a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of the states (full text).

(credit: Creon Levit/NASA Ames)

We are at the beginning of a revolution. I've been going on about quantum computing for as long as I've been writing, but it has always been in the future tense. Nothing useful could be done as researchers stepped through all the foothills on their way to the peaks, but now the summit is in view. Just two months ago, we reported on a quantum computer that mashed digital aspects of quantum computing together with analog aspects. In doing so, the researchers came up with a more robust architecture. While this is promising, it's not much more than what others have done with different types of quantum computers.

Now, the same device has been used to do real quantum chemistry calculations, and it seems scarily accurate.

Chemistry? I came here for physics

As any physicist will tell you, chemistry is just physics. And as any chemist will tell you, unsolvable equations are worthless when you're staring down the barrel of a synthesis that has gone wrong (I've paraphrased what a chemist would actually say, which Ars editorial standards would not allow me to print).