Tell-It-Like-It-Is: June 2012

Researchers use spoofing to 'hack' into a flying drone

Drones are mostly used for military operations

American researchers took control of a flying drone by hacking into its GPS system - acting on a $1,000 (£640) dare from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

A University of Texas at Austin team used "spoofing" - a technique where the drone mistakes the signal from hackers for the one sent from GPS satellites.
The same method may have been used to bring down a US drone in Iran in 2011.
Analysts say that the demo shows the potential danger of using drones.
Drones are unmanned aircraft, often controlled from a hub located thousands of kilometres away.
They are mostly used by the military in conflict zones such as Afghanistan.
Todd Humphreys and his colleagues from the Radionavigation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin hacked the GPS system of a drone belonging to the university.
They demonstrated the technique to DHS officials, using a mini helicopter drone, flown over a stadium in Austin, said Fox News, who broke the story.

SPOOFING EXPLAINED
"Imagine you've got a plane in the air and it sends back information to the person controlling it on the ground.
So if I wanted to fly my drone on a route between London and Birmingham, delivering mail for instance, I would get continuous signals coming back telling me where it is at all times.
And I would get GPS co-ordinates, using a signal from the satellite to navigate.
But if the drone is near Birmingham, but it receives GPS co-ordinates for Gloucester, it would then think it is in Gloucester and make an adjustment to go further north, changing the course."
Noel Sharkey

"What if you could take down one of these drones delivering FedEx packages and use that as your missile?" Fox News quoted Mr Humphreys.

"That's the same mentality the 911 attackers had."
Potential dangers The spoofed drone used an unencrypted GPS signal, which is normally used by civilian planes, says Noel Sharkey, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.
"It's easy to spoof an unencrypted drone. Anybody technically skilled could do this - it would cost them some £700 for the equipment and that's it," he told BBC News.
"It's very dangerous - if a drone is being directed somewhere using its GPS, [a spoofer] can make it think it's somewhere else and make it crash into a building, or crash somewhere else, or just steal it and fill it with explosives and direct somewhere.
"But the big worry is - it also means that it wouldn't be too hard for [a very skilled person] to work out how to un-encrypt military drones and spoof them, and that could be extremely dangerous because they could turn them on the wrong people.

Porn gives man severe headaches

Every time a young man watched pornography over two years, he experienced a headache so severe he had to stop watching, according to a report of his case.
The headache would develop gradually, beginning within the first five minutes of the video, and would reach its most severe point within eight to 10 minutes, according to the neurologists who treated the man, a 24-year-old bachelor in India.
There are two types of "primary headache associated with sexual activity," as the condition is properly called, and it sounds as if this man had the less common type, which progresses slowly along with heightening sexual arousal, Dr. Amy Gelfand, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, said after hearing about the case."The more common type is a sudden and severe headache that occurs at orgasm," Gelfand said. The seeming commonness of that headache may simply be due to the fact that people are more likely to bring them to medical attention, frightened by their timing, she added.
Regardless of the type, primary sex headaches are a mystery, Gelfand said — no one really knows what causes them. Some have speculated that muscle contractions in the neck and jaw during sex may somehow trigger the headaches, while others have suggested they occur because blood vessels in the head are abnormally reactive to sexual activity.
The researchers who treated the man in India suggested his case was caused by changes in the pain-sensing nerves in the face and jaw, along with increased pain sensitivity due to "a heightened emotional state associated with viewing pornography."
Primary sex headaches strike 1 percent of the population at some point in life, and are more common in men, Gelfand said. About half of people who have them also have migraines, but it's not known whether having migraines raises the likelihood of having sex headaches, or vice versa – or whether other untold factors are behind both.
The patient in India — an otherwise healthy man who worked as a software professional — had no history of migraines or tension headaches in general, and he reported no previous headaches linked with sexual activity, including masturbation. He'd had no head injuries or meningitis infections, the researchers said.
Previous studies have not suggested any link between the headaches and specific sexual behaviors, the researchers said.
Story: Allergic to orgasm? Man's sad story has happy ending
The results of the man's physical and neurological exams were reportedly normal. Gelfand said that is often with the case in people with primary sex headaches. (In fact, if an exam revealed a physical cause of the headaches, then by definition, the person would be instead diagnosed with a "secondary sex headache," she said.)
The man was advised to take a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen half an hour before watching porn, and he reported the drugs signiﬁcantly relieved his pain.
In most people, the headaches occur over a period of a few months, rather than years, Gelfand said. Patients are often treated with a drug called indomethacin, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug available by prescription in the U.S., and is also used to treat other types of headaches.
The case report was published online June 14 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

By Karen Rowan-MyHealthNewsDaily

Google Copies Microsoft, Not Apple, To Fix Android Fragmentation

This is smart, and long overdue. Google said today that it will begin releasing an Android Platform Development Kit (PDK).

This will give Android device makers access to coming versions of Android 2-3 months before its official release.
As is well-documented, most Android devices are way behind. 65% today run Android 2.3 Gingerbread which, with the release of 4.1 JellyBean today, now lags 3 versions behind.
The PDK isn’t a cure-all, but it will hopefully allow OEMs to release new smartphones and tablets running up-to-date versions of Android.
This will also help them update their older smartphones and tablets sooner, too (though there the mobile carriers remain bottlenecks).
How is this like Microsoft? With its open Windows hardware ecosystem, Microsoft also faces problems of fragmentation and also failure-to-upgrade. Indeed, Windows XP remains more popular than Windows 7, despite being more than a decade old (it was released in fall 2001).
That’s not because PC makers are bad at releasing new hardware on the latest OS. They are actually quite good at that, due to all beta versions that Microsoft provides early, all of the testing support it offers, and all of the ecosystem marketing that Microsoft in general does.
No, the reason XP is still so popular is because enterprises still go out of their way to erase Windows 7 from a new PC and re-install XP, in order to make it easier to manage and to support old, XP-only software.
Releasing an Android PDK several months in advance is a small step towards replicating the Microsoft ecosystem model, something Google would probably only grudgingly admit to be doing.
Apple, by contrast, has no hardware partners. It hires contractors to help make hardware that it alone designs and sells. Thus, it doesn’t need to give early access to iOS to third-party hardware makers. It does allow developers to get new versions of iOS 2-3 months before it is released to users of its iPhone or iPad, though. Fortunately, that’s all the time that some developers need.

James leads Heat to NBA title

LeBron James hugs Dywane Wade Thursday night as the finals seconds tick off the clock.

The Miami Heat defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 121-106 Thursday night in Miami to win the NBA championship in five games.

League MVP LeBron James scored 26 points, and had 11 rebounds and 13 assists for Miami. Chris Bosh scored 24 points and Dwyane Wade 20 for the Heat.
Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant led all scorers with 32 points.
It was James' first title since signing with the Heat as a free agent in 2010. James won two MVP awards over seven seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers but no NBA titles. James was drafted by Cleveland out of high school in nearby Akron, Ohio.
"This is a dream come true for me. This is definitely when it pays off," James said after the game. James was named the series MVP.
The Heat lost last year's finals to the Dallas Mavericks.
"We had to go through last year," Wade said after the game, according to NBA.com. "As much as it hurt, we had to experience it to get here, this season."
The Heat, who won four games straight to win the best-of-seven series, took a lead early in the game and never let up, leading by 25 points in the final minutes of the third quarter.
Thunder coach Scott Brooks said his young team will learn from the finals experience.
"I think when you play against the best, you learn. You don't get better by playing bad teams," Brooks said. "We've played against the best three teams in the last few years and we've learned."
Durant had a game-high 32 points but said losing in the finals is the hardest thing he and his team have been through.
"It's tough, that's the only way to explain it. As a whole I'm proud of the guys for how we've fought all season," Durant said. "I wouldn't want to play for anyone else or any other city."

Mysterious bones may belong to John the Baptist

Image: Bones claimed to be of John the Baptist

Oxford University

Bones claimed to be of John the Baptist that were analysed by the research team. Clockwise from top left, the knucklebone, ulna, part of cranial bone and molar (together) and rib.

By Stephanie Pappas Senior Writer

A small handful of bones found in an ancient church in Bulgaria may belong to John the Baptist, the biblical figure said to have baptized Jesus.

There's no way to be sure, of course, as there are no confirmed pieces of John the Baptist to compare to the fragments of bone. But the sarcophagus holding the bones was found near a second box bearing the name of St. John and his feast date (also called a holy day) of June 24. Now, new radiocarbon dating of the collagen in one of the bones pegs its age to the early first century, consistent with the New Testament and Jewish histories of John the Baptist's life.
"We got some dates that are very interesting indeed," study researcher Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford told LiveScience. "They suggest that the human bone is all from the same person, it's from a male, and it has a very high likelihood of an origin in the Near East," or Middle East where John the Baptist would have lived.
Mysterious bone box The bones were found in 2010 by Romanian archaeologists Kazimir Popkonstantinov and Rossina Kostova while excavating an old church site on the island of Sveti Ivan, which translates to St. John. The church was constructed in two periods in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Beneath the altar, the archaeologists found a small marble sarcophagus, about 6 inches long. Inside were six human bones and three animal bones. The next day, the researchers found a second box just 20 inches away. This one was made of volcanic rock called tuff. On it, an inscription read, "Dear Lord, please help your servant Thomas" along with St. John the Baptist's name and official church feast day.
A grotesque gift The findings paint a story of a man named Thomas charged with bringing relics, or body parts, of St. John to the island to consecrate a new church there. It was common in the fourth and fifth centuries for wealthy patrons to pay for new churches and to give saintly relics to the monks who staffed them, Higham told LiveScience. [8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]
"We can imagine that the construction of this church was predicated on the basis of this very important gift, perhaps from the patron to the monastery," Higham said.
The human bones in the box included a knucklebone, a tooth, part of a cranium, a rib and an ulna, or arm bone. The researchers could only date the knucklebone, because radiocarbon dating relies on organic material, and only that bone had enough collagen for a good analysis. The researchers were able to reconstruct DNA sequences from three of the bones, however, showing them to be from the same person, likely a Middle Eastern man.
"Our worry was that the remains might have been contaminated with modern DNA," study researcher Hannes Schroeder, formerly of Oxford, said in a statement. "However, the DNA we found in the samples showed damage patterns that are characteristic of ancient DNA, which gave us confidence in the results. Further, it seems somewhat unlikely that all three samples would yield the same sequence considering that they had probably been handled by different people."
Schroeder added that "both of these facts suggest that the DNA we sequenced was actually authentic."
Strangely, the three animal bones (one from a sheep, one from a cow, and one from a horse), were all about 400 years older than the human bones in the reliquary. Those three bones all seem to come from the same time and location, Higham said. They may have been placed there as a way to desecrate the human bones, he said. Or someone may have just been trying to make the bone box look a little more impressive.
"It is very curious," Higham said. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]
Elusive identification Historical research by Oxford professor Georges Kazan suggests that relics supposedly from John the Baptist were on the move out of Jerusalem by the fourth century. Many of these artifacts were shuttled through the ancient city of Constantinople and may well have been given to the Sveti Ivan monastery from there.
None of this proves that the bones belonged to a historical figure named John the Baptist, but researchers haven't been able to rule out the possibility, Higham said. Their study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but a program detailing the research will be aired on the United Kingdom National Geographic Channel on Sunday. National Geographic funded the research.
Even if the monks of Sveti Ivan believed the bones to be St. John's, they may not have been. Fake relics were and still are common. For example, at least 30 nails have been venerated as the ones used to keep Jesus Christ on the cross (biblical scholars debate whether three or four nails would have been used). Likewise, French theologian John Calvin once noted that if all of the supposed fragments of Jesus' cross were gathered together, they'd fill a shipload. Even Joan of Arc has been the subject of forgery. A 2007 study found that alleged pieces of her body kept in a French church actually belonged to an Egyptian mummy. [9 Famous Art Forgers]
The Sveti Ivan box is not the only reliquary said to hold the remains of John the Baptist, Higham said. If the researchers are able to test other bones said to be the saint's, they could build a circumstantial case for their authenticity. Nevertheless, a positive identification will likely remain out of reach.
"Definitely proving it, I think, is going to remain ever-elusive," Higham said.

32,000-Year-Old Plant Reborn From Ancient Fruit Found in Siberian Ice

Researchers in Russia have revived a fertile plant from the remains of 32,000-year-old fruit that was found buried within the fossilized burrows of ancient squirrels deep in the Siberian ice.
The resurrected plant, from an era of woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats, is the oldest viable multicellular living organism, according to the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is also the first plant returned to life from permafrost conditions, researchers said.

A narrow-leaf campion, revived from the remains of 32,000-year-old fruit that was found buried within the fossilized burrows of ancient squirrels deep in the Siberian ice. Photographer: Svetlana Yashina via Bloomberg

The discovery raises the possibility of reviving other frozen organisms with prehistoric gene pools, researchers said. Using a horticulture technique called micropropagation, researchers grew the plant from fruit tissue in a test tube of nutrients. The ones that grew roots were transferred into pots with soil and light, where they developed flowers and seeds.
“There is abundant permafrost in northern Alaska and Canada,” said Buford Price, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who edited the paper, in an e-mail. Finding an organism that could produce a plant with dark green leaves and small white flowers shows the benefit of pursuing goals that seem impossible, he said.
Price said he expects the researchers to “get increased funding levels to expand this work, going deeper and looking at other likely locations of animal burrows where plants were stashed.”
The fruit was found preserved 124 feet (38 meters) deep in permafrost, ice at below-freezing temperatures that hadn’t melted or been disturbed since the late Pleistocene epoch. The ancient burrows can store as many as 800,000 seeds, the report said.
Permafrost covers about 20 percent of the earth’s surface and is now under extensive investigation for preserved life that could be revived, according to the researchers led by David Gilichinsky at the Institutes of Cell Biophysics and Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Pushchino, Russia.

White House Says al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Killed

A drone strike in Pakistan has netted a big fish: al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Abu Yahya al-Libi, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Asked about al-Libi’s reported death at Tuesday’s White House briefing, Carney initially was equivocal: “I can tell you that our intelligence community has intelligence that leads them to believe that al-Qaida’s number two leader, al-Libi, is dead,” he said. His intelligence apparently got better moments later when he was asked about it again. “Our government has been able to confirm al-Libi’s death.” he said flatly.
“Removing leaders like al-Libi from the very top of al-Qaida,” Carney added, “is part of an ongoing effort to disrupt and dismantle and ultimately defeat al-Qaida, and that is an important piece of business.”

al-Libi had been deputy to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s, who has run al-Qaeda since Osama bin Laden’s fate was SEALed. al-Libi had been imprisoned at Bagram air base in Afghanistan for three years before escaping in 2005 and returning to the fight. “He is one of their most experienced and versatile leaders,” a U.S. official told Time’s Michael Scherer. “He played a key role in their operations against the West.”
Pakistani intelligence sources told Reuters the al-Qaeda second in command was hit in a drone attack on Monday, June 4. “The intelligence official said, according to informants, Libi was seriously wounded in the strike and was taken to a private hospital, where he died,” Reuters reports from Pakistan. (Take a closer look at Libi here.)
This is a solid win in the so-called war on terrorism. al-Libi was the link between al-Qaeda and its most feared franchise, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The fact that he is the second al-Qaeda deputy in less than a year to be killed will hamper Zawahiri’s efforts to replace him. It also will be a blow to morale throughout al-Qaeda’s ranks, U.S. officials believe.
The U.S. has had a standing reward of up to $1 million for al-Libi’s killing or capture. “Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan citizen, is an Islamic scholar who … has since appeared in a number of propaganda videos, using his religious training to influence people and legitimize the actions of al-Qa´ida,” says the State Department post. “Al-Libi is a key motivator in the global jihadi movement and his messages convey a clear threat to U.S. persons or property worldwide.”
A key card has been removed from the deck of potential terrorism targets weighed by President Obama on Tuesdays.

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