ICT news

• Hackers Have Found an Entirely New Way To Backdoor Into Microsoft Windows

  25-08-2024 23:47 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  A university in Taiwan was breached with "a previously unseen backdoor (Backdoor.Msupedge) utilizing an infrequently seen technique," Symantec reports.
  The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control server via DNS traffic... The code for the DNS tunneling tool is based on the publicly available dnscat2 tool. It receives commands by performing name resolution... Msupedge not only receives commands via DNS traffic but also uses the resolved IP address
  
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• Are OpenAI's ChatGPT Actions Being Abused To Scan For Web Vulnerabilities?

  25-08-2024 22:47 via slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack explains: A blog post at the SANS Internet Storm Center suggests that OpenAI actions are being abused to scan for WordPress vulnerabilities.
  Honeypot sensors at the Storm Center detected scans for URLs targeting WordPress that originated exclusively from OpenAI systems. The URLs requested all pages including the pattern '%%target%%', which may indicate that the scan is meant to include additional path components but the expansion of the template failed. The
  
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• US Scientists Identify Cause of Massive Crab Die-Off

  25-08-2024 21:47 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader mmell writes:Recent reports have indicated a near-complete collapse in the population of Snow Crabs in the Bering Sea. Scientists with the US Government's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that warming in the environment has led to vast numbers of snow crabs starving to death.There has been a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of argument on whether or how much humanity has had an effect on the fundamental ecology of our planet... Here is a
  
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• Sam Bankman-Fried Didn't Have 'Character of a Thief', Argues Author Michael Lewis

  25-08-2024 20:47 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this story from the blog Decrypt:Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite, an account of the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, has argued that the disgraced FTX founder didn't have "the character of a thief" in a new The Washington Post article. "His crime was of a piece with his character. The character wasn't the character of a thief. It was the character of a person numb to risk." Lewis explained in the final paragraphs of a 4,500 word essay adapted from a new intr
  
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• Can We Fight Climate Change By Bioengineering a Better Cow?

  25-08-2024 19:44 via science.slashdot.org
  
  One of Slashdot's most-visited stories of all time was the 2016 story asking: Can Cow Backpacks Reduce Global Methane Emissions?"Enteric fermentation," or livestock's digestive process, accounts for 22 percent of all U.S. methane emissions, and the manure they produce makes up eight percent more, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency... Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse gas, but methane's global warming impact per molecule is 25 times greater than carbon's, according to the E
  
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• ARRL Pays $1 Million Ransom To Decrypt Their Systems After Attack

  25-08-2024 18:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The nonprofit American Radio Relay League — founded in 1914 — has approximately 161,000 members, according to Wikipedia (with over 7,000 members outside the U.S.)
  But sometime in early May its systems network was compromised, "by threat actors using information they had purchased on the dark web," the nonprofit announced this week. The attackers accessed the ARRL's on-site systems — as well as most of its cloud-based systems — using "a wide variety of payloads affecting e
  
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• Ford Cancels Electric SUV, Delays EV Pickup

  25-08-2024 17:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Volkswagen said this week it would wait to see where EV demand goes before building out the last three of its six planned battery factories. And now Ford has also cancelled its planned electric SUV and delayed production of an all-new electric pickup, according to CNBC, moves Ford now believes could cost up to $1.9 billion.
  But Ford isn't giving up. Ford's COO told CNBC Thursday that "We're quite convinced that the highest adoption rates for electric vehicles will be in the affordable segment on
  
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• 'Threads' Tests Posts That Disappear After 24 Hours

  25-08-2024 16:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  After announcing it had 200 million active users earlier this month, Threads is now "testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts," writes Engadget:
  A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer Alessandro Paluzzi...It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was experimenting with auto-archiving. That optional feature would
  
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• How Reddit Challenges Google and Meta with Ads Based on Topics - Not User Data

  25-08-2024 13:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Six months after going public, Reddit "is winning over advertisers," reports Bloomberg, "by showing that it's different than other internet platforms, which often rely on users' identities and personal information to target ads."Instead, Reddit is targeting people based on their interests, relying on the site's [100,000+] deeply detailed communities — called subreddits — to match advertisers with potential customers... Early returns on that strategy have been promising. The text-base
  
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• Linus Torvalds Talks About Rust Adoption and AI

  25-08-2024 09:34 via linux.slashdot.org
  
  "At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit China conference, Linus Torvalds and his buddy Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office, once more chatted about Linux development and related issues," reports ZDNet:
  Torvalds: "Later this year, we will have the 20th anniversary of the real-time Linux project. This is a project that literally started 20 years ago, and the people involved are finally at that point where they feel like it is done... well, almost done. They're stil
  
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• Amazon CEO: AI-Assisted Code Transformation Saved Us 4,500 Years of Developer Work

  25-08-2024 05:34 via developers.slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this anecdote about Amazon's GenAI assistant for software development, Amazon Q:On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to boast that using Amazon Q to do Java upgrades has already saved Amazon from having to pay for 4,500 developer-years of work. ("Yes, that number is crazy but, real," writes Jassy). And Jassy says it also provided Amazon with an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains from enhanced security and reduced infrastructure c
  
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• Netflix Shares First Six Minutes of New Anime Series 'Terminator Zero'

  25-08-2024 03:34 via entertainment.slashdot.org
  
  "It's going to be violent," warns the creator of Terminator Zero, an eight-episode anime series premiering Thursday August 29th on Netflix. "It's going to be dark, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting."
  And the Netflix blog has now shared the first six minutes online:
  In the world of Terminator, the future is never set, yet some things are guaranteed: The Terminator is still a cyborg that feels no remorse, pity, or fear. The anime series TERMINATOR ZERO, landing on Netflix o
  
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• Telegram CEO Arested In France

  25-08-2024 01:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Telegram's billionaire founder/CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night outside Paris, reports Reuters, citing French TV news stations TF1 TV and BFM TV which attributed the news to unnamed sources:Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation. TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that th
  
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• How Should Cybersecurity Evolve After Crowdstrike's Outage?

  25-08-2024 00:20 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft will meet with CrowdStrike and other security companies" on September 10, reports CNBC, to "discuss ways to evolve" the industry after a faulty CrowdStrike software update in July caused millions of Windows computers to crash:
  [An anonymous Microsoft executive] said participants at the Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit will explore the possibility of having applications rely more on a part of Windows called user mode instead of the more privileged kernel mode... Attendees at M
  
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