Gizmodo Australia » worms

Scientists Develop Phaser That Can Stun (Worms)

Adam Frucci — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:40:00 +0000

The good news: Scientists have developed a Star Trek-like phaser that can be set to stun. The bad news: It only works on worms, so far.

Researchers have now found a way to paralyse tiny worms when they expose them to ultraviolet light. Even when the ultraviolet light was turned off the animals stayed stunned. However, if they were subsequently exposed to a different form of light they recovered again and were able to move.

The researchers claim that this is the first time that such an effect has been demonstrated in an animal. Although some of the worms died, most of them lived through the process.

The effect is caused by using a molecule which changes its shape when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Well, it’s a start I suppose. [Telegraph via The Daily What]

Worms For IPhone: Same Game, Worse Controls

Adam Frucci — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:20:00 +0000

You’re probably familiar with Worms by now. About 20 versions of the game have been released for every platform under the sun, so it was inevitable that it would show up for the iPhone.

Unfortunately, the iPhone is a terrible platform for it. Worms is a game that’s all about precision; you’ve gotta be able to control your worms and their weapons exactly to be successful at it, and precision movement of tiny characters is not something the iPhone’s touchscreen excels at. There’s just no way you can swoop in with a jetpack, drop a stick of dynamite and then fly to a ledge for safety before it blows up. Without tight, precise controls, it feels like trying to build a Lego set with oven mitts on.

Which is too bad, because for $US5 you basically get the full original Worms game that you’ll pay $US10 for from Xbox Live Arcade. There’s a full campaign mode, challenges and a versus mode (that requires passing the phone back and forth). But none of it is worth a damn when you end up blowing yourself up or walking off a cliff every other turn because of near-unusable controls.

Want to play Worms? Go get Worms 2: Armageddon, which came out on Xbox Live Arcade last week. Because this just isn’t worth the frustration. [Worms (iTunes Link)]

Disgusting Sewer Creature Update: IT’S F#$%ING REAL!

Adam Frucci — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:20:00 +0000

Remember the disgusting video of some mysterious creature in the North Carolina sewers I posted yesterday? I cynically assumed it was a viral ad for some upcoming movie. Sweet merciful christ, I was wrong. These things are actually real.

The crew at DeepSeaNews.com sent the video over to Dr. Timothy S. Wood, an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association (what fun parties they must have, eh?), and he had this to say about it:

Thanks for the video – I had not see it before. No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting. Interesting video.

Here’s a more clear video of these Tubiflex worms in the wild. Not quite as horrifying, but still pretty gross.

[Deep Sea News; Thanks, Stevenson]

Conficker Worm Hits U.S. Hospitals, Infecting Computers and Equipment

Adrian Covert — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Cnet says that hundreds of critical hospital devices across the U.S. have been infected by the Conficker worm. The number of hospitals affected wasn’t disclosed, but the problem isn’t thought to be widespread.

Cybersecurity expert Marcus Sachs broke the news at a security conference in San Francisco, raising the question of what would happen if this were to happen to millions of machines in the medical industry. According to sachs, the devices affected were hospital computers and devices used to control critical equipment, such as heart monitors and MRI machines.

No one is quite sure how the computers acquired the worms to begin with, but most of the Windows 2000/NT machines were to old to benefit from Microsoft’s October patch which fixed many of the vulnerabilities Conficker preyed on. [Cnet via Slashdot]

Conficker Worm Claims High Profile Victim: University of Utah

Jack Loftus — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:01:01 +0000

More than 700 med school computers at the University of Utah have fallen victim to the infamous Conficker worm. Gizmodo, we swear, had absolutely nothing to do with it. [AP via CNET]

Conficker’d Machines Are All Doing… Something

John Herrman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:30:45 +0000

Whether it’s an actual functional update or a ploy to further inflate the worm’s horrifying reputation, an encrypted, mysterious thing is downloading to machines infected with Conficker C, right now.

The original Conficker doomsday, April 1st, came and went without serious incident. But as Mahoney explained, the worm’s subtle update that day left us at much greater risk than before. This so-far inscrutable update could be the first manifestation of security experts’ concerns; Trend Micro, in a blog post that sounds more like it was written by a President in an apocalypse movie than a software security expert, has only been able to determine that the payload polls popular websites to check for connectivity, then deletes itself. They speculate, however, that it could be installing a data-gathering Waledac virus.

With no actionable solution for shrinking the three-million-PC install base, we can expect to see plenty of these kinds of stories in the near future. Feel like patching yet? [BBC]

How the Conficker Problem Just Got Much Worse

John Mahoney — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:00:00 +0000

On the surface, April 1 came and went without a peep from the dreaded Conficker megaworm. But security experts see a frightening reality, one where Conficker is now more powerful and more dangerous than ever.

CONFICKER IS NOT HAPPENING. IGNORE CONFICKER.

John Herrman — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:23:45 +0000

CONFICKER IS NOT HAPPENING. IGNORE CONFICKER.

CONFICKER IS NOT HAPPENING. IGNORE CONFICKER

>CONFICKER IS NOT HAPPENING. IGNORE CONFICKER

CONFICKER IS NOT HAPPENING. IGNORE CONFICKER

Reminder: How to Fix Conficker

Matt Buchanan — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:54 +0000

Afraid you’ve got the evil Conficker worm that’s already begun snaking its way around the world? Thanks to herculean efforts by researchers, the detection and fix is pretty easy.

Symantec’s got a pretty simple (and free) tool specifically for Conficker: Download this file on an uninfected computer, follow the steps, and you should be okay. (If you can’t get to Symantec or other security sites, that’s a good sign you’ve got Conficker.) Also, via PC Mag, here’s the Conficker Working Group’s page of repair of tools.[Symantec]

11th-Hour Fix May Protect Huge Corporate Networks From Conficker Worm’s Nastiness

John Mahoney — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Zero-hour approaches for the awakening of the Conficker megaworm. As we explained, Conficker can evade detection like none before it. But security experts have released a scanner that may save your IT professional’s sanity tomorrow.

Security expert Dan Kaminsky, working with the Honeynet Project’s Tillmann Werner and Felix Leder, have discovered an easier way to detect if a machine on a network is infected by Conflicker. Dan writes:

What we’ve found is pretty cool: Conficker actually changes what Windows looks like on the network, and this change can be detected remotely, anonymously, and very, very quickly. You can literally ask a server if it’s infected with Conficker, and it will tell you.

The code, just released today, is quickly finding its way into the scanners of all the major security software companies, and will hopefully prevent the worldwide holocaust/Russian Lolcat invasion tomorrow. We’ll see! [Doxpara Research via Ars Technica]