Category: Technology

Pnicogen. Silent “p” or sounded? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) people just contacted me, wanting a definitive answer.

Partly because they found my Molecule of the Month on the subject at Paul May’s excellent site and suspected I was some kind of expert. Sadly I’m not, so I’ve resorted to asking a couple of contacts who might actually have a clue. I’d like it to be p’nuh but suspect the p should be silent, as in pneumatic. However, the OED entry currently claims otherwise, and my first contact agrees that it should be “p’ni”

The idea of robots in the military brings about thoughts of a sci-fi nightmare, probably starring Arnie and most definitely not R2. The military does, nevertheless, already use robotics to help members of the armed forces protect themselves against a wide range of dangers. But, the idea of a robot fighter shooting at the enemy is not that far from reality.

Read about this and the latest robotics news on our scenta robots news page.

P30%_gha! or p0%3ghA!?

If you’ve ever resorted to scribbling your assigned computer password on a Post-It and sticking it to the side of your monitor because it was too cryptic to remember, then research at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany, could be just what you’ve been waiting for.

The scientists there have developed a new program — PasswordSitter. “Using it, you only need to remember a single password. The program provides all the other passwords on any device, whenever you need them”, explains team leader Markus Schneider, “A special procedure based on state-of-the-art encryption technology provides the necessary security.”

Despite new security mechanisms, requesting a password is the most common method of checking a user’s identity. Most of us have so many passwords for websites, databases, email etc, that remembering which one goes with what is a major headache. The problem is doubled by company IT managers who often force users (quite sensibly) not only to choose non-obvious passwords with mixed alphanumerics and even punctuation marks but also to change it on a regular basis.

According to the annual Safenet survey, half of all professional computer users write down their passwords, and around a third even divulge their passwords to colleagues. It almost defeats the object of having a password in the first place. A lot of people go for weak passwords, such as the name of a spouse, or don’t think twice about using the same password for everything. “These kinds of practices harbour potential security risks”, says Schneider, “On the other hand, it’s virtually impossible for you to follow the security advice from the experts without any help.”

PasswordSitter bolsters security because it generates strong passwords, while the level of security can be set to allow different password guidelines to be followed and passwords can be changed quickly and easily.

But, you may be wondering why not opt for one of those neat USB fingerprint reader? gadgets? Well, they’re fine if you’re at your own PC, but what happens if you’re working at someone else’s workstation or in a cybercafe?

PasswordSitter provides users with access to their passwords from any device at any time they need them.

So, how does it work? Well, it seems that Fraunhofer aren’t so keen to reveal details, although Schneider told Sciencebase that, “PasswordSitter is available as signed Java applet. If you are in a cybercafe in Peru, then you can download PasswordSitter, type in your Master Password and PasswordSitter generates your ebay password for you every time you need it. Note that your ebay password is not stored in the PasswordSitter system.”

There are other password-minding systems out there – including PassPack and LastPass and if you’re stuck for ideas for how to come up with a password try my passwords for scientists idea.

Personally, I’m way past the dating game, having been happily married for several years. But, as an angsty teen with a passion for the more nerdy things in life – many of which begin with the prefixes astro-, star-, and chem- Trek Passions would have been a lifesaver. If you’re looking for love and haven’t yet found your Lieutenant Uhura, your Han Solo, or even your Ford Prefect, then this site could be the place to go. Essentially, it’s an off the dial free dating site for sci fi fans and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It interfaces lonely hearts, enables matter transportation of an amorous kind, and basically presses all the right buttons among the millions of Trekkies, Starwarsies, Clarkies, and perhaps even Wyndhamies out there.

McCoy: [to Spock] You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him [referring to Kirk] because you’ll never know the things that love can drive a man to. The ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures and the glorious victories. All of these things you’ll never know, simply because the word “love” isn’t written into your book. Good night, Spock.

So, sign up, but watch out it’s a scary worlds out there…

A sciencebase visitors attempted to spam the blog recently with an advert for his detox kits. Needless to say, this blog automatically adds a rel=nofollow tag to all comment URLs, so it’s a waste of time spamming us anyway, but moreover, all comments are moderated so that cr*pfloods are easily averted.

Anyway, if you want to find out what a detox kit is check this Google search: detox kits – Google Search

It seems that the marketing spiel claims that these kits can clear out the tell-tale signs of any drug of abuse and so help users pass drugs tests. Looks like bunk to me, nothing can “detox” your body. Metabolites have to be excreted eventually and chemical analysis would reveal the presence of even modified metabolites in your urine.

One thing that does worry me about these kits though. If they do “mop up” drugs and drug metabolites from your bloodstream then they’re going to have to be incredibly selective so as not to interfere with prescription drugs, surely.

I’d be very wary of using them (they’re rather pricey too!) to try and pass a drugs test. Much easier just to avoid those drugs of abuse in the first place.

Check out Indiana University’s Censearchip. It allows you to see how search engine censorship (on Google or Yahoo) in various countries affects the search engine results pages (SERPs) you see depending on where you search from (well if you’re in China, France, Germany, and the USA. It’s quite fascinating to see the tag clouds it generates to show the differences between searching in different countries.

The tool’s developers, Mark Meiss and Filippo Menczer at the Indiana University School of Informatics, caution that ‘In order to give as accurate a comparison as possible, we’ve disabled the ‘SafeSearch’ feature that search engines use to block images with explicit violent or sexual content from their search results. Some of the images returned may be quite graphic and inappropriate for children. Please exercise caution in your searches!’

You have been warned.

A Norwegian graduate student reckons his new antivirus program which can detect unknown viruses is thirty times faster than rival systems developed by the team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tom Lysemose’s software can also effectively detect attacks by unknown computer viruses. The press release from the Research Council of Norway claims that no previous software can detect unknown viruses, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. The antivirus companies have been using heuristic algorithms to spot virus characteristics in suspect files for years, albeit with nowhere near 100% accuracy.

Nevertheless, Lysemose hopes to address the rather embarrassing situation in which many software vendors have found themselves – namely that common programming errors lead to so-called buffer overflow, which can be exploited transparently by a virus.

Lysemose points out that such programming mistakes are common for all programrs who write in C, one of the world’s most common programming languages. The web browser Internet Explorer, the VOIP telephony system Skype and the database software from Microsoft SQL Server are all affected, even antivirus software itself, such as that proferred by Symantec, is susceptible to this problem.

The effects can be devastating. In 2003, the Slammer virus took control of a huge number of database servers, spreading itself rapidly. The virus was not especially destructive, it spread so widely that it slowed down the entire Internet. Systems over the entire world were affected, and even some banks’ automated teller machines were shut down, says Lysemose.

To understand Lysemose’s software, one needs a quick introduction to how Buffer Overflow is a unfortunate programming error. Within a computer’s internal memory are a series of containers called buffers. When running a program that communicates over the Internet, such as a web browser, the technology functions so that the contents in the buffers of the network server are transferred to the buffers in the computer.

One example is when a password is entered on a web page. The password is stored in its own buffer on the local computer. Consider, for example, that this buffer could only have enough space for eight characters. If the programr forgets to check the buffer size, the buffer runs over if someone enters more than eight characters.

Unfortunately, not all programrs are aware of this. If those who write software have not included a routine that checks if enough room exists in the buffer, the areas that are physically next to the buffer will be overwritten. This is extremely regrettable. The computer gives no warning and continues to run as if nothing has happened.

Unfortunately, the overwritten areas can hold important instructions for the software that’s running, such as “Please provide an overview of all my documents”.

This is exactly the type of weakness that virus creators exploit. They can make a virus that sends a larger data packet than the computer’s buffer capacity. If the hacker discovers exactly where the most important instructions are located, the virus can be programd so that it overwrites these instructions with completely different commands, such as “Delete all of my documents now”. And then the user is out of luck.

Which is where Lysemose’s innovation comes in to its own. His system, ProMon, cannot prevent an unknown virus from attacking a buffer and the areas around it, but ProMon monitors programs to ensure that they do not do things that they are not programd to do. This means that ProMon will stop a program if it suddenly begins to do another thing.

This solution is a new way of thinking about virus prevention. ProMon works within a program, such as the web browser Internet Explorer, in order to monitor the interaction between the program’s modules. As long as the program performs legitimate transactions between its modules, ProMon does nothing. But if an illegal transaction occurs, ProMon decides a virus has attacked and promptly stops the program, Lysemose explains. As such, ProMon can monitor any program. The product will be introduced to the large anti-virus companies later this month.

In the meantime, check out the sciencebase spyware, trojans and worms page