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Yet, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) reports that despite the fix, multiple state-affiliated hacking entities are still exploiting this vulnerability, primarily targeting users who have not yet updated their software. Their in-depth research, shared with TechCrunch, suggests that these exploits can be attributed to hacking syndicates associated with the governments of Russia and China.

Among the implicated parties is Sandworm, a notorious hacking group connected to Russian military intelligence. Sandworm has been previously implicated in major cyberattacks, such as the devastating NotPetya ransomware attack in 2017 which severely impacted Ukraine. TAG’s analysis suggests that in September, Sandworm misused the WinRAR vulnerability in a malicious email campaign, posing as a Ukrainian drone warfare training institution.

Another well-known Russian-affiliated hacking entity, Fancy Bear (or APT28), is also reported to have used the WinRAR exploit, targeting Ukrainian entities with deceptive emails seemingly sent by the Razumkov Centre, a Ukrainian public policy institute. Fancy Bear gained international infamy following their 2016 attack on the Democratic National Committee.

Further insights by Cluster25, a threat intelligence firm, echo these findings, having observed similar exploitation tactics traced back to Russia. Their assessment suspects Fancy Bear to be the main orchestrator.

Furthermore, Google’s experts have identified another cyber espionage group, APT40, believed to be backed by the Chinese state, as an abuser of the same WinRAR flaw. This group reportedly targeted individuals in Papua New Guinea via phishing campaigns carrying the CVE-2023-38831 exploit.

In light of these revelations, TAG emphasizes the significance of timely software updates, highlighting that even after vulnerabilities are known and patched, they can still be potent weapons in a hacker’s arsenal due to delayed user updates.

Decoding a Star’s Lifeline

While stars may seem eternally unchanging, they do undergo nuanced alterations in luminosity and hue. Leveraging high-precision tools, astronomers juxtapose observed stellar attributes with mathematical models charting star life stages, deriving age estimates.

Another telltale sign of a star’s age is its rotational velocity. Just as a top eventually wanes in its spin, stars, too, experience a gradual slowdown in their rotations. This phenomenon has paved the way for “gyrochronology,” which ties star ages to their spin rates.

Further clues lie in the magnetic personality of stars. The rotations lead to potent magnetic fields responsible for phenomena like stellar flares. As stars age, their magnetic zest wanes, offering another age indicator.

Taking age estimation a notch higher is asteroseismology. This method delves into the oscillatory patterns on star surfaces, stemming from waves traversing their depths. The Sun, for instance, with its 4.58-billion-year tag, was aged via this technique.

Let’s begin by dividing our knowledge base into three separate sections:

– What is known to be true, today, in 2023,

– What is not yet known but is assumed to be true, based on our current knowledge,

– What remains unknown, even today, even with the best knowledge at our disposal.

As far as the true things go, this represents the full suite of tremendous accomplishments, both from the experimental/observational side that’s rooted in concrete evidence, as well as from the theoretical side that are simply extrapolations from what’s successfully explained by our best theories to what the necessary consequences of those theories are.

We know how many stars there are, including what percentage of them are like the Sun, what percentage have enough heavy elements to be consistent with having the potential for rocky planets and life on those planets around them, how many of those systems are present within the observable Universe at present, and how many of those systems are actually observable by us, today, if we had arbitrarily advanced technology to work with. It’s absolutely remarkable that just about 30 years ago, we didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, and yet today, we’ve learned the definitive answers to them all.

Within our own Milky Way, there are somewhere around 400 billion stars, but the Milky Way itself is a particularly large, evolved, late-time galaxy compared to the average galaxy in the Universe. We can map out what’s called the metallicity of the stars in our galaxy — the fraction of heavy elements, elements heavier than hydrogen or helium, that are present within the star — and see what the relationship is between a star’s metallicity and its chances of having planets around it. And we can also sort stars by their mass and spectral type, and see what fraction of those stars have possibly Earth-like planets around them, where “Earth-like” at this point only means:

– Rocky, like Earth,

– About the same mass and radius as Earth,

– At about the same distance from its parent star to receive comparable amounts of power as Earth receives from the Sun,

– And where that’s truly all we can measure for now.

And finally, we can take what we know about star-formation in the Universe and the full suite of observed galaxies — as well as the theoretical expectations for galaxies that are too faint, too low-in-mass, too close to larger galaxies, and too distant for us to directly resolve — to come up with an estimate for how many potentially inhabitable worlds there are contained within the observable Universe. That information, all of it, falls into that first category of “what is known” to be true, today, in late 2023.

I, ROBOT BY ISAAC ASIMOV

Obviously, this novel had to be included. Isaac Asimov asked the crucial questions about robots and AI that we’re still asking today. When do we decide that robots are sentient? If they become sentient, is it acceptable that they’re enslaved to us? If they become sentient, can they feel emotion? For the record, the movie featuring Will Smith has very little to do with this book except in its fundamental questions about AI. In a series of stories and scenarios, Asimov picks apart what it could mean to truly bring robots to life.

The independent team that conducted the study observed that while a significant number of UAP occurrences can be attributed to familiar phenomena, many remain unsolved due to insufficient data. Acquiring such data is no easy task. In urban locales, for example, dense background distractions can obscure readings. Additionally, the equipment often used to capture such data might not be primed for the task. When it comes to military incidents, the employment of confidential technologies to gather even mundane images or videos becomes an added impediment.

To overcome these obstacles, agencies are recalibrating their data-collection methodologies. A focal point for AARO now is discerning how identifiable phenomena, like weather patterns or balloons, appear to military sensors. This would aid in filtering out actual anomalies.

The report also touched upon the complications of monitoring airspace in the vicinity of military sites, stating, “The airspace near military sites is a challenging place to search for UAP: human aircrafts, drones, balloons, and other objects, are all significant sources of background [clutter].” This underlines the military’s apprehension about UAPs near their bases, viewing them primarily as potential security threats.

Currently, while the military is keen on gathering reports from service members and associated government bodies like NASA, there is no official channel for civilians to report UAP sightings. NASA’s report highlighted the importance of civilian data and emphasized the necessity of creating a federal system to register such reports.

Public interest in UAPs has surged, particularly after the U.S. military began releasing UAP footage captured by service members in 2017.

To conclude the conference, NASA announced Mark McInerney, previously a Pentagon liaison for UAP matters, as the head of NASA’s UAP investigation efforts.

Among the myriad findings, the team discerned that denser materials in the Moon gravitated centerward while lighter elements rose. This phenomenon had been previously postulated by experts to elucidate specific elemental presences in the Moon’s volcanic zones.

Yet, the revelation that garnered most attention was the identification of the Moon’s core structure. Mirroring Earth, the Moon boasts a fluid external layer surrounding a solid inner core. Notably, a 2011 NASA-led inquiry, which employed seismological tactics on Apollo data to study the lunar core, arrived at a congruent conclusion. The alignment of findings, despite diverse methodologies, lends weight to their veracity.

Samantha Hansen, a geologist from the University of Alabama, remarked on the findings, “Seismic investigations like ours are peeling back the layers of the Earth, showing us a structural complexity we hadn’t anticipated.” Hansen continued, expressing the significance of the research, “These discoveries are reshaping our understanding of the deep Earth and the forces that shape our planet on the surface.”

To obtain a clearer picture of Earth’s insides, Hansen’s team relied on data from 15 different stations located in the icy wilderness of Antarctica. They employed seismic waves, birthed from Earth’s natural quakes, as a sophisticated tool to sketch an internal map of the planet.

An unexpected surge of energy was identified within moments of the wave reflecting off the boundary in the seismic data. This phenomenon led the researchers to the discovery of the ultra-low velocity zone (ULVZs), a vast expanse named for its distinctive slow wave speeds. Although this layer is svelte in thickness, it extends over an impressive stretch of kilometers.

The unique attributes of the ULVZs suggest varying heights across this layer. Edward Garnero, a geophysicist from Arizona State University, provided some perspective, saying, “We’re likely observing mountains at the core, some of which could be grander in scale than Mount Everest by up to five times.”

These subterranean peaks could be pivotal in dictating the release of heat from the core, influencing not only the Earth’s magnetic fields but also volcanic activities.

While current research hints at the layer potentially enveloping the entire core, further exploration is needed to solidify this theory. The journey to uncover Earth’s deepest secrets continues, and this discovery is a significant leap in that voyage.