Treatment Triggers Teeth To Thrive

April 13, 2021 by Kristina Panos 38 Comments

We humans like to think we’re pretty advanced, but we can’t regrow missing teeth in adulthood like sharks, alligators, and crocodiles. Once those pearly whites are gone, they’re gone for good, and we don’t even have a way to regenerate the protective enamel. However, this may not always be the case, because scientists at Kyoto University and University of Fukui in Japan have discovered a monoclonal antibody treatment that triggers tooth regeneration in laboratory mice.

Image by Katsu Takahashi/Kyoto University via Medical Express

Monoclonal antibodies are lab-fabbed molecules that act as substitute antibodies to enhance the body’s natural defenses against diseases like cancer and arthritis. These antibodies are also used to develop vaccines and treat COVID-19. In the case of cancer, monoclonal antibodies bind to antigens on cancer cells, effectively flagging them for removal, but they also do much more, such as deliver chemo and radioimmunotherapies.

By blocking the gene USAG-1, the scientists saw an increase in Bone Morphogenic Protein (BMP), which is a molecule that dictates the number of teeth a given creature will have in the first place. Because of this increase in BMP, the mice were able to regrow teeth. This proposition was a challenging one — BMP affects other aspects of development, and the early attempts did more harm than good by causing birth defects. The good news is that the treatment also worked in ferrets, whose teeth are much closer to human dentition than mice. Before moving on to human trials, the scientists will test it out on pigs and dogs. If you were given a second shot at a set of teeth, would you treat them better than the first, or even worse because you can just grow new ones again?

Speaking of pigs, it seems that pig-to-human organ transplants are on track for 2021.

Space Shuttle Program: 40th Anniversary Of The First Launch Of Columbia

April 12, 2021 by Dan Maloney 19 Comments

For those who grew up watching the endless coverage of the Apollo program in the 60s and 70s, the sight of OV-102, better known as the Space Shuttle Columbia, perched on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center was somewhat disconcerting. Compared to the sleek lines of a Saturn V rocket, the spacecraft on display on April 12, 1981, seemed an ungainly beast. It looked like an airplane that had been tacked onto a grain silo, with a couple of roman candles attached to it for good measure. Everything about it seemed the opposite of what we’d come to expect from spaceflight, but as the seconds ticked away to liftoff 40 years ago this day, we still had hope that this strange contraption wouldn’t disappoint.

At first, as the main engines ignited, it seemed that Columbia would indeed disappoint. The liquid hydrogen exhaust plume seemed anemic, at least compared to the gout of incandescent kerosene that had belched out from every rocket I’d ever seen launched. But then those magnificent — and as it later turned out, deadly dangerous — solid rocket boosters came to life, and Columbia fairly leaped off the launchpad. Americans were on their way to space again after a six-year absence, and I remember cheering astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen on as I watched the coverage with my dad that early Sunday morning.

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This Week In Security: The Facebook Leak, The YouTube Leak, And File Type Confusion

April 9, 2021 by Jonathan Bennett 21 Comments

Facebook had a problem, way back in the simpler times that was 2019. Something like 533 million accounts had the cell phone number associated with the account leaked. It’s making security news this week, because that database has now been released for free in its entirety. The dataset consists of Facebook ID, cell number, name, location, birthday, bio, and email address. Facebook has pointed out that the data was not a hack or breach, but was simply scraped prior to a vulnerability being fixed in 2019.

The vulnerability was in Facebook’s contact import service, also known as the “Find Friends” feature. The short explanation is that anyone could punch a random phone number in, and get a bit of information about the FB account that claimed that number. The problem was that some interfaces to that service didn’t have appropriate rate limiting features. Combine that with Facebook’s constant urging that everyone link a cell number to their account, and the default privacy setting that lets anyone locate you by your cell number, and the data scraping was all but inevitable. The actual technique used may have been to spoof that requests were coming from the official Facebook app.

[Troy Hunt]’s Have i been pwned service has integrated this breach, and now allows searching by phone number, so go check to see if you’re one of the exposed. If you are, keep the leaked data in mind every time an email or phone call comes from someone you don’t know. Continue reading “This Week In Security: The Facebook Leak, The YouTube Leak, And File Type Confusion” →

Fun While It Lasted, Falcon 9 Telemetry Now Encrypted

April 7, 2021 by Tom Nardi 56 Comments

A few weeks back we brought word that Reddit users [derekcz] and [Xerbot] had managed to receive the 2232.5 MHz telemetry downlink from a Falcon 9 upper stage and pull out some interesting plain-text strings. With further software fiddling, the vehicle’s video streams were decoded, resulting in some absolutely breathtaking shots of the rocket and its payload from low Earth orbit.

Unfortunately, it looks like those heady days are now over, as [derekcz] reports the downlink from the latest Falcon 9 mission was nothing but intelligible noise. Since the hardware and software haven’t changed on his side, the only logical conclusion is that SpaceX wasn’t too happy about radio amateurs listening in on their rocket and decided to employ some form of encryption.

Since this data has apparently been broadcast out in the clear for nearly a decade before anyone on the ground noticed, it’s easy to see this as an overreaction. After all, what’s the harm in a few geeks with hacked together antennas getting a peek at a stack of Starlink satellites? [derekcz] even mused that allowing hobbyists to capture these space views might earn the company some positive buzz, something Elon Musk never seems to get enough of.

Some of the images [derekcz] was able to capture from the Falcon 9

On the other hand, we know that SpaceX is actively pursuing more lucrative national security launch contracts for both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. For these sensitive government payloads, the normal on-screen telemetry data and space views are omitted from the company’s official live streams. It seems likely the Pentagon would be very interested in finding out how civilians were able to obtain this information, and a guarantee from SpaceX that the link would be encrypted for all future flights could have helped smooth things over.

At the end of the post [derekcz] echos a sentiment we’ve been hearing from other amateur radio operators recently, which is that pretty soon space may be off-limits for us civilians. As older weather satellites begin to fail and get replaced with newer and inevitably more complex models, the days of picking up satellite images with an RTL-SDR and a few lines of Python are likely numbered.

Ford And HP Teamed Up To Drive Down Plastic Waste

April 3, 2021 by Kristina Panos 25 Comments

This mass manufacturer movement towards electric cars is one thing, but what about sustainability on the plastic part production line? Ford and HP have teamed up to turn used 3D printed parts and powders into pellets that will be fodder for injection-molded parts — specifically the fuel-line clips for Super Duty F250 trucks.

According to Ford’s press release, their goal is to reach 100% sustainable materials in all their vehicles, not just the diesel-drinking Super Duty. Their research team found ten other Fords whose existing fuel-line clips could instead be made sustainably, and the company plans to implement the recycled plastic clips on all future models.

There are all sorts of positives at play here: the recycled clips cost 10% less to make and end up weighing 7% less than traditionally-made clips, all the while managing to be more chemical and moisture resistant.

And so much plastic will be kept out of landfills, especially once this idea takes off and more manufacturers get involved with HP or form other partnerships. One of the sources of Ford’s plastic is Smile Direct Club, which has 60 printers cranking out over 40,000 dental aligners every day.

There’s more than one way to combine 3D printing and sustainability. Did someone say fungal sound absorbers?

[Images via Ford]

Python Will Soon Support Switch Statements

April 2, 2021 by Adam Zeloof 113 Comments

Rejoice! Gone are the long chains of if…else statements, because switch statements will soon be here — sort of. What the Python gods are actually giving us are match statements. match statements are awfully similar to switch statements, but have a few really cool and unique features, which I’ll attempt to illustrate below.

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This Week In Security: Ubiquity Update, PHP Backdoor, And Netmask

April 2, 2021 by Jonathan Bennett 11 Comments

Back in January, we covered the news that Ubiquiti had a breach of undisclosed severity. One reader pointed out the compromise of a handful of devices as potentially related. With no similar reports out there, I didn’t think too much of it at the time. Now, however, a whistleblower from Ubiquiti has given Krebs the juicy details.

The “third party cloud provider” the original disclosure referred to was Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to the whistleblower, just about everything was accessible, including the keys to log in to any Ubiquiti device on the internet, so long as it was cloud enabled. The attackers installed a couple of backdoors in Ubiquiti’s infrastructure, and sent a 50 bitcoin blackmail threat. To their credit, Ubiquiti ignored the blackmail and cleaned up the mess.

To the claim that there was no evidence attackers had accessed user accounts, it seems that the database in question simply has no logging enabled. There was no evidence, because nothing was watching. So far, I’ve only seen the one report of device compromise that was potentially a result of the attack. If you had a Ubiquiti device go rogue around December 2020 – January 2021, be sure to let us know. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Ubiquity Update, PHP Backdoor, And Netmask” →