The Conficker worm was one of the more intriguing and potentially destructive pieces of malware in the past decade. Earlier reports have suggested that Stuxnet was created by the US and Israeli governments, and now Reuters has a source telling them Conficker was also used to negate Iran’s nuclear program. More »
A team of Columbia University researchers says it’s not impossible: they’ve discovered an exploit for the embedded systems found in printers that hackers can control and rewrite the firmware for without anyone knowing — then use that to steal information or potentially cause printers to catch fire. More »
In his Netherlands laboratory, virologist Ron Fouchier recently experimented with spreading the avian flu virus among ferrets. Ten generations later, the deadly flu has mutated into an airborne strain that could kill half the human population. More »
The H1N1 flu pandemic killed 17,000 people across the globe between 2009 and 2010. Pretty terrifying. To prevent that from ever happening again, scientists have created a super-detailed computer model of the killer virus. More »
Despite no official confirmation by the Pentagon, it’s a very safe assumption that the US created the Stuxnet worm (with Israel’s help) to take Iran’s nuclear reactors offline. But when it was first discovered, it seemed too sophisticated for Earthlings. More »