Researchers Generate Electricity From Viruses
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working on technology that will be able to harness that power to generate electricity from viruses.
From press releaase:
The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.
Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division said, “More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics”.
Adobe Zero-day PDF Exploit Dangerous
The latest threat from Adobe is the zero-day PDF exploit, which comes disguised as a golf lesson, can do pretty much anything. It can download malicious bots; it can load keystroke-tracking software, and more. The exploit bypasses two important defenses that Microsoft erected to protect Windows, ASLR (address space layout randomization) and DEP (date execution prevention).
From Adobe:
A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Reader 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, and Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-2883) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.
Facebook Attacked By Koobface Worm
Koobface worm is now spreading through the social networking Facebook site’s messaging system. Users are being targeted if they see messages in their Facebook inboxes with titles like “you look funny or you look just awesome in this new movie” and direct readers to an external website to watch a video clip.
Users upon clicking the site will be asked to update their Flash software. This particular software contains the Koobface worm which will use tinyproxy.exe to listens to traffic on TCP port 9090 and proxies all outgoing HTTP traffic.
