Over 1,000 stations suffer remote vulnerabilities - Researchers

ITREALMS:

The researchers at Kaspersky Lab, have helped uncover a number of unknown vulnerabilities that have left gas stations around the world exposed to remote takeover, often for years, reports ITRealms. The vulnerabilities, ITRealms gathered, were found in an embedded gas station controller of which there are currently over 1,000 installed and online. “The manufacturer was notified when the threat was confirmed,” Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, Ido Naor, said. According to experts at Kaspersky Lab they found the controller during unrelated research into devices with open connections to the internet. In many cases the controller had been placed in the fuel station over a decade ago and had been connected to the internet ever since. The controller, they explained runs a Linux machine operated with high privileges and the researchers discovered a number of vulnerabilities that leave the device and the systems it is connected to open to cyberattack. For example, the researchers said, these vulnerabilities were able to monitor and configure many of the gas station settings.  “An intruder able to bypass the login screen and gain access to the main interfaces would be able to shut down all fueling systems, change the fuel prices, cause fuel leakages, circumvent payment terminals to steal money (the controller connects directly to the payment terminal, so payment transactions could be hijacked).” In addition, Ido Naor, said the interfaces could scrape vehicle license plates and driver identities, execute code on the controller unit; move freely within the gas station network.” “When it comes to connected devices it is easy to focus on the new and to forget about products installed many years ago that might be leaving the business wide open to attack. The damage that could be done by sabotaging a gas station doesn’t bear thinking about. We have shared our findings with the manufacturer,” said Ido Naor, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “The vulnerabilities have also been reported to MITRE and the research is ongoing. “Kaspersky Lab advises manufacturers of connected internet-of-thing devices to consider the security of their products from the very first moment of development and design, and to review legacy devices for possible security vulnerabilities. Users of connected devices are urged to review regularly the security of these devices and not to rely on factory settings.”

 Chuks Egbune/GEE

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Researchers innovate next generation of electronic devices

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A team of researchers from the University of Manchester’s Photon Science Institute have collaborated with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and industry partners from Germany to develop the new instrument of electronic devices employing 2D materials reports ITRealms.

This table-top instrument, ITRealms gathered affords the new magnet to only generate a field in short pulses that each last for a fleeting one hundredth of a second.

ITRealms recalls that since the 1950s, experiments conducted with magnetic fields have played a pivotal role in the development of semiconductors devices such as transistors and light-emitting diodes that have changed the world. Previously, scientists have had to visit huge facilities such as the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in the USA to probe the fundamental structure of materials to better understand and manipulate their properties.

However, such facilities are extremely scarce, and scientists must compete with others for valuable time on the machines.

The team led by Dr Darren Graham, ITRealms reports worked with researchers from manufacturers Laser Quantum to incorporate lasers into the new instrument which are more than 10 times quicker than those found in typical ultrafast laser systems. Thus allowing them to increase the number of measurements during one magnetic pulse to around 100 - previous experiments with a similar magnet system were limited to 4 measurements per pulse.

“We’re sure that when people realise that we can do such measurements in the lab they will be lining up to use our instrument. We’ve already been contacted by several groups interested in having measurements made on their samples,” Dr Graham said.

Ben Spencer, a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Manchester’s Photon Science Institute said, the challenge when using these pulsed magnets was being able to record data within the brief time period that the magnet is on.

“The breakthrough we have made is in the measurement technique, which is the leap forward that will now enable routine cyclotron resonance measurements on a table-top in a laboratory environment,” Spencer said.

Remmy Nweke/ED.Op

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Pix: Dr Darren Graham

Tomatoes may combat damaging effects of radiation

ITRealms:

A team of researchers from The University of Manchester have discovered that lycopene - the red pigment in tomatoes - is extremely successful at guarding against the harmful effects of radiation, reports ITRealms.

The team led by Dr Ruth Edge from The University of Manchester, together with her colleagues Professor George Truscott from Keele University and Professors Fritz Boehm & Christian Witt from Berlin, undertook a study of lycopene (one of the carotenoids - plant pigments found in many fruits and vegetables) and its effectiveness at protecting against radiation at the University of Manchester’s Dalton Cumbrian Facility, part of the Dalton Nuclear Institute.

Radiation therapy is used to treat a wide range of tumours, but until now, its side effects have constrained its effectiveness. Recently, there has been interest in the possible role of dietary carotenoids in limiting these effects. In addition, interest has grown in identifying dietary counter-measures against nuclear accidents.

The results of the study, published in FEBS Letters, have shown that lycopene is an effective carotenoid at offering protection from the damaging effects of gamma radiation, and that dietary intervention could be useful in efforts to defend people from these effects. A plentiful supply of tomatoes, cooked in oil which helps the body to absorb carotenoids, would be an effective way of adding lycopene to diets. A major finding of the study is that such protective effects are reduced as the oxygen concentration is increased.

Dr Ruth Edge, Experimental Officer and Laboratory Manager at the Dalton Cumbrian Facility, said: “We have shown that lycopene can protect human cells efficiently against gamma radiation at low, but not high oxygen concentrations, and we hope that this effect may allow for improvements in radiation cancer therapy if the oxygen concentration can be increased in solid tumours compared to the healthy surrounding tissue”.

Future studies will look at other dietary carotenoids, as well as mixtures, to determine whether there is also an oxygen effect and to try to increase any protection range observed with oxygen concentration. In addition, the team will also study the oxygen effect using other sources of radiation, such as proton and alpha particle beams from the Dalton Cumbrian Facility accelerator.

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