Previously scientists at IBM and other institutes have successfully demonstrated the ability to store 1 bit per cell in PCM, but today at the IEEE International Memory Workshop in Paris, IBM scientists are presenting, for the first time, successfully storing 3 bits per cell in a 64k-cell array at elevated temperatures and after 1 million endurance cycles.
“Phase change memory is the first instantiation of a universal memory with properties of both DRAM and flash, thus answering one of the grand challenges of our industry,” said Dr. Haris Pozidis, an author of the paper and the manager of non-volatile memory research at IBM Research – Zurich. “Reaching 3 bits per cell is a significant milestone because at this density the cost of PCM will be significantly less than DRAM and closer to flash.”
More than 1,200 new planets confirmed using new technique for verifying Kepler data
The Vespa technique works by comparing the details of a transiting planet signal — specifically its duration, depth and shape — against simulated planetary and false positive signals to indicate the type of signal the candidate most likely is. At the same time, Vespa factors in the projected distribution and frequency of star types in the galaxy from which the signal originated to determine the chances that a planet with the characteristics being analyzed would exist.
ImageMagick Remote Command Execution Vulnerability
The vulnerability is very simple to exploit, an attacker only needs a image uploader tool that leverages ImageMagick. During our research we found many popular web applications and SaaS products vulnerable to it (people love gravatars), and we have been contacting them privately to get things patched. Unfortunately, even with all the media attention, not everyone is aware of this issue.
Source: ImageMagick Remote Command Execution Vulnerability – Sucuri Blog
Update From: ImageMagick Is On Fire — CVE-2016–3714
If you use ImageMagick or an affected library, we recommend you mitigate the known vulnerabilities by doing at least one of these two things (but preferably both!):
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Verify that all image files begin with the expected “magic bytes” corresponding to the image file types you support before sending them to ImageMagick for processing. (see FAQ for more info)
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Use a policy file to disable the vulnerable ImageMagick coders. The global policy for ImageMagick is usually found in “/etc/ImageMagick”. The below policy.xml example will disable the coders EPHEMERAL, URL, MVG, and MSL.
My ImageMagick policy file is in /usr/lib64/ImageMagick-6.6.4/config/policy.xml Click the link to get the exact rules to add. I use ImageMagick with Gallery software but only admin has access to uploading images so this bug doesn’t matter for my use case.
Microsoft’s Naggy Windows 10 Upgrade Prompt Interrupts Meteorologist’s Weathercast
However, at least for one meteorologist, the Windows 10 upgrade prompt came during an inopportune time — right in the middle of a live weathercast. Metinka Slater, a meteorologist with Des Moines CBS affiliate KCCI 8, was going about her business, giving viewers a rundown of the 12-hour rainfall totals in the area when a nagging Windows 10 upgrade screen popped up, just like it has for thousands (if not millions) of everyday Windows users.
Source: Microsoft’s Naggy Windows 10 Upgrade Prompt Interrupts Meteorologist’s Weathercast
How I Hacked Facebook, and Found Someone’s Backdoor Script
Here I’d like to explain some common security problems found in large corporations during pentesting by giving an example.
Source: How I Hacked Facebook, and Found Someone’s Backdoor Script | DEVCORE 戴夫寇爾
A brief summary, the hacker created a proxy on the credential page to log the credentials of Facebook employees. These logged passwords were stored under web directory for the hacker to use WGET every once in a while
The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster
The conceptual problems arise with momentum. The system’s total momentum increases as it begins to move. But where does this momentum come from? Shawyer had no convincing explanation, and critics said this was an obvious violation of the law of conservation of momentum.
Source: The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster
McCulloch says there is observational evidence for this in the form of the famous fly by anomalies. These are the strange jumps in momentum observed in some spacecraft as they fly past Earth toward other planets. That’s exactly what his theory predicts.
Americans abandoning wired home Internet, study shows
In plain English, they’re abandoning their wired Internet for a mobile-data-only diet — and if the trend continues, it could reflect a huge shift in the way we experience the Web.
Source: Americans abandoning wired home Internet, study shows | The Seattle Times
Seventeen percent of households making between $75,000 and $100,000 are mobile-only now, compared with 8 percent two years ago. And 15 percent of households earning more than $100,000 are mobile-only, versus 6 percent in 2013.
Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses
We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records. Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.
We believe these actions violate two of the fundamental rights that have been part of this country since its founding. These lengthy and even permanent secrecy orders violate the Fourth Amendment, which gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. They also violate the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to talk to customers about how government action is affecting their data.
Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode
The last regular contact with the spacecraft was on April. 4. The spacecraft was in good health and operating as expected.
Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012, detecting nearly 5,000 exoplanets, of which, more than 1,000 have been confirmed. In 2014 the Kepler spacecraft began a new mission called K2. In this extended mission, K2 continues the search for exoplanets while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae, and many other astronomical objects.
Source: Mission Manager Update: Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode | NASA
Also From: Kepler Reaction Wheel Failure Cripples Spacecraft, but Mission Thrives
To save on bandwidth, Kepler only downlinks data from the pixels associated with 156,000 target stars out of the millions of stars in the Kepler field. Data from an “aperture” of pixels around each target star are downlinked to Earth, and computer programs on Earth measure the brightness of the star based on the light that hit the pixels in the aperture. If the telescope pointing is not good enough to keep the target stars in their respective apertures on the pixels, it is impossible to measure the brightness of those stars with a precision of 20 parts per million.
Update From: Kepler telescope readies for new mission after communications scare
Once the spacecraft checks out, Kepler will kick off its latest effort, looking toward the galactic center for planets whose gravity distorts the light from far more distant stars. This technique, known as gravitational microlensing, has been used with ground-based telescopes to discover about 46 planets, some of them orphaned from their parent stars. But the method is a first for Kepler, which searches for dips in starlight caused by planets crossing in front of their suns.
Here’s how brothers rigged lotteries, authorities say
Examiners found out-of-place programs known as dynamic link libraries, or DLLs, that had been written onto the Wisconsin computer. The programs were designed to “redirect” a drawing if certain conditions were met, according to the complaint, helping orchestrate the outcome.
Source: Here’s how brothers rigged lotteries, authorities say