Free Republic

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (Gray News) – A 14-year-old from Virginia was crowned America’s Top Young Scientist for inventing a soap that treats skin cancer. According to a news release, Heman Bekele, a ninth grader at W.T. Woodson High School in Annandale, won the 2023 3M Young Scientist Challenge last week. Heman developed Melanoma Treating Soap, a compound-based bar of soap designed to treat skin cancer. Over the next five years, he hopes to refine his innovation and create a nonprofit organization that will distribute this low-cost solution to communities in need. The final product came out to a shockingly cheap...

Last year, several security vulnerabilities were discovered, making it difficult for system administrators to patch the systems without downtime quickly.What if some improvements can be made to update some critical components for security/performance improvements without rebooting a system?Intel aims to achieve that with its new PFRUT (Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry) driver.Intel Plans to Make PFRUT Available With Linux Kernel 5.17While Linux Kernel 5.16 is due later this weekend, Intel aims to merge this new addition with the upcoming Linux Kernel 5.17 stable release.But, what exactly is it?With PFRUT driver, specific components (or the system firmware) can be updated...

More than 270 workers are set to lose their jobs at the award-winning chef's restaurants this month due to the coronavirus. CHICAGO, IL — Hundreds of workers at Iron Chef Stephanie Izard's restaurants in Chicago are set to lose their jobs later this month. The companies that operate Izard's Girl & The Goat, Duck Duck Goat and Little Goat Diner notified Illinois officials in July that each plan to lay off dozens of restaurant workers starting Sept. 20. According to notices filed with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, 96 employees at Little Goat Diner face permanent layoffs,...

A 66-year-old Virginia musician and pastor who had questioned coronavirus media coverage died from the disease after a trip to New Orleans. A 66-year-old Virginia resident who fell ill with the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, on a trip to New Orleans died Wednesday morning at a hospital in Concord, North Carolina. The death of Landon Spradlin, an accomplished musician and a pastor, has drawn viral attention online, in part because earlier this month Spradlin questioned whether media coverage of the disease was overblown. Spradlin lived in Gretna, a small town in Pittsylvania County, about halfway between Lynchburg and Danville. While...

Summary New vulnerabilities are continually emerging, but the best defense against attackers exploiting patched vulnerabilities is simple: keep software up to date. Timely patching is one of the most efficient and cost-effective steps an organization can take to minimize its exposure to cybersecurity threats. On January 14, 2020, Microsoft released software fixes to address 49 vulnerabilities as part of their monthly Patch Tuesday announcement. Among the vulnerabilities patched were critical weaknesses in Windows CryptoAPI and Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) server and client. An attacker could remotely exploit these vulnerabilities to decrypt, modify, or inject data on user connections: CryptoAPI...

The job requires experience "in disarmament affairs, political analysis or in national military or paramilitary service" The United Nations is now accepting job applications in New York City, New York for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration officers to "contribute to security and stability in post-conflict environments." UN DDR forces operate under the intergovernmental organization's Department of Peace Operations to "assist" the Member States, including the United States, in a boots on the ground capacity. *[https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/department-of-peace-operations?fbclid=IwAR2hBOgH2C3SGU0FCqIASFyEFDgBm9psLFFoJ59Mhs4VEQazW1Wo9-8gzvo]* The job listing describes the UN's core values as "Integrity, Professionalism, [and] Respect for Diversity." Applicants eager to conduct DDR "field missions" are required to have...

Update Internet Explorer now after Google detects attacks in the wild Microsoft today emitted an emergency security patch for a flaw in Internet Explorer that hackers are exploiting in the wild to hijack computers.The vulnerability, CVE-2018-8653, is a remote-code execution hole in the browser's scripting engine.Visiting a malicious website abusing this bug with a vulnerable version of IE is enough to be potentially infected by spyware, ransomware or some other software nasty. Thus, check Microsoft Update and install any available patches as soon as you can.Any injected code will run with the privileges of the logged-in user, which is why...

If at first you don't succeed, you're Redmond Microsoft today issued an emergency security update to correct a security update it issued earlier this month to correct a security update it issued in January and February.In January and February, Redmond emitted fixes for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 machines to counter the Meltdown chip-level vulnerability in modern Intel x64 processors. Unfortunately, those patches blew a gaping hole in the operating systems: normal applications and logged-in users could now access and modify any part of physical RAM, and gain complete control over a box, with the updates installed.Rather than stop...

"We are auditing our development processes." “Apple Inc said on Wednesday it would review its software development process a day after a researcher discovered a bug in a new version of its Mac operating system that could give hackers total control of vulnerable machines,” Stephen Nellis reports for Reuters. “Apple said it released a patch to fix the bug on Wednesday morning and it would be automatically installed on vulnerable machines later in the day.”“‘We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users,’ Apple said in a statement. ‘Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development...

Did anybody else not pay any attention to what happened over the weekend? I found myself uninterested in March Madness, couldn’t summon the energy required to watch the Sunday Showboats spout off on why RyanCare was a disaster for whoever they were opposed to, not in the mood for Donald J.Trump’s tweets and couldn’t even manage to get appropriately agitated about the black-hooded New World Order Obots who showed up at the Trump rally to pepper spray the attendees.But this caught my attention, possibly because it inadvertently provides insight and commentary on everything else that has run amok in this...

Bethesda has released update patch 1.6 for Fallout 4 today on the Xbox One and PS4 platforms of the game. Aside from the usual fixes, this new update patch includes new names for Codsworth to say. The patch also gives support for the upcoming Workshop mode DLC. Full patch notes can be seen below [at the link]. ... The aforementioned workshop DLC comes to Fallout 4 on July 26th. After that, the Nuka-World DLC will be released this August on all platforms.

An email sent anonymously to the city council suggested Mayor Lindsey Horvath had a secret abortion. WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA -- Hours after Mayor Lindsey Horvath published a letter denouncing Donald Trump and telling him he wasn't welcome in her town, emails with computer links to graphic abortions were sent to the entire West Hollywood City Council along with a message that suggested she once had a secret abortion. The email was sent Monday and came with the subject line: "Are These Undercover Videos of Linsey P. Horvath's Secret Abortion? Watch dismemberment & decapitation of unborn baby." Horvath said the sender...

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio continue their attacks on Ted Cruz's integrity in campaign's final hours.Voting is under way in the South Carolina Republican primary, where frontrunner Donald Trump hopes to overcome a slide in the polls and Ted Cruz is hoping for a repeat of a performance in Iowa, where he defied polls and defeated Trump by 4 points. Votes will be cast until 7 p.m. Saturday. At stake in the first of the Southern primaries are 50 delegates. * Check back here for live voting results as they come in. Nevada Democrats were also caucusing Saturday, where Hillary...

Intel has patched a major flaw in its driver utility tool that could allow attackers to install malware on victim PCs remotely. The chipmaker has issued a patch advisory for its Driver Update Utility, urging customers to download the new version of the software. The tool analyses system drivers on a user's computer and reports on and downloads any new drivers that are available. The flaw - which exists because the software requests new drivers from Intel servers over an unencrypted connection - allows attackers to instigate man-in-the-middle attacks and cause the download of malicious files and software on victim...

The US Army has debuted a new shoulder patch that soldiers in Iraq can wear to represent their role in the ongoing fight against ISIS, USA Today reports. The patch features crossed scimitars, three stars, and a palm wreath. According to USA Today, the three stars denote the US land, air, and sea forces involved in the fight against ISIS. The palm wreath is meant to symbolize honor, while the crossed swords evoke the twin goals of the ongoing operations: the defeat of ISIS and the restoration of stability in the region. Currently, there are over 3,000 US Army personnel...

Arstechnica has an article up concerning a remote coded execution bug in some routers. Arstechnica does not wish their articles to be posted or excerpted here, so the webpage addy is included for those wishing to read more about it. Affects D-Link and Trendnet routers.

An 'important' patch from this month’s Black Tuesday causes odd problems in many applications. It’s taken more than a week for various problem reports to take on a coherent theme, but it now appears as if an “elevation of privilege” patch for Windows, MS 15-038/KB 3045999, causes intermittent problems with a wide array of software.... [For example, on systems with McAfee:] Several applications fail to start after you install Microsoft Patch MS15-038 on systems with DLP [Data Loss Prevention for] Endpoint. Affected applications include, but are not limited to: CMD.EXE Explorer.EXE MMC-based applications Microsoft Office applications PowerShell ... it’s another...

Late last month a mysterious patch suddenly appeared as an Optional entry in the Windows Automatic Update chute. At the time I wrote: Conjecture at this point: It's somehow related to the ability to upgrade directly from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10. But of course, the official documentation doesn't say anything of the sort. The crows have come home to roost and, thanks to a German researcher named Gerard Himmelein at heise.de, we now have a more thorough understanding of exactly what Microsoft's dishing out (a Google English translation of the post is available). Yesterday Jan Willem Aldershoff...

The Shellshock vulnerability in the commonly used Bash command line interpreter shell is likely to require more patches, as security researchers continue to unearth further problems in the code. Google security researcher Michal "lcamtuf" Zalewski has disclosed to iTnews that over the past two days he has discovered two previously unaddressed issues in the Bash function parser, one of which is as bad as the original Shellshock vulnerability. "The first one likely permits remote code execution, but the attack would require a degree of expertise to carry out," Zalewski said. "The second one is essentially equivalent to the original flaw,...