The Insider News

Engadget[^]:

Security researchers at Safety Detective revealed vulnerabilities in the temperature control systems found in freezers that could allow an attacker to hijack the devices and destroy its contents.

InfoQ[^]:

This report is a case study on upgrading a C# 7 class library to C# 8 with nullable reference types.

IEEE Spectrum[^]:

A new user verification system for phones relies on the unique way a person moves his or her lips

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In this case, machines were set to work analyzing the human genome and predicting human demographics by simulating how our DNA might have evolved over many thousands of possible scenarios of ancient evolution. The program accounted for the structure and evolution of DNA as well as models of human migration and interbreeding to try to fit some of the pieces together in an incredibly complex puzzle.

The researchers trained the computer to analyze eight different models of the most plausible theories of early human evolution across Eurasia. The models came from previous studies that attempted to come up with a scenario that would result in the current picture of the human genome, including its known Neanderthal and Denisovan components.

“With each of these eight models, we calculate over weeks of computations how well they are able to reach the actual, present genetic composition of humans,” Bertranpetit says. “Every time we do a simulation, it's a simulation of a possible path of human evolution, and we have run those simulations thousands of times, and the deep learning algorithms are able to recognize which of the models best suit the data.”

Computerworld[^]:

Microsoft’s Blue Hat IL presentation from MSRC shows that, in 2017-18, the threat from zero days far exceeds the threat of delaying patches by 30 days. Moreover, the vast majority of zero days are used in targeted attacks, not in public attacks.

Bleeping Computer[^]:

A malicious spreadsheet has been discovered that builds a PowerShell command from individual pixels in a downloaded image of Mario from Super Mario Bros. When executed, this command will download and install malware such as the GandCrab Ransomware and other malware.

ADT magazine[^]:

A new developer survey about Python reveals the programming language is now used primarily for data analysis, supplanting the previous No. 1 use case, Web development.