Security researchers at Google say they’ve found a number of malicious websites which, when visited, could quietly hack into a victim’s iPhone by exploiting a set of previously undisclosed software flaws.

Google’s Project Zero said in a deep-dive blog post published late on Thursday that the websites were visited thousands of times per week by unsuspecting victims, in what they described as an “indiscriminate” attack.

“Simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant,” said Ian Beer, a security researcher at Project Zero.

He said the websites had been hacking iPhones over a “period of at least two years.”

The researchers found five distinct exploit chains involving 12 separate security flaws, including seven involving Safari, the in-built web browser on iPhones. The five separate attack chains allowed an attacker to gain “root” access to the device — the highest level of access and privilege on an iPhone. In doing so, an attacker could gain access to the device’s full range of features normally off-limits to the user. That means an attacker could quietly install malicious apps to spy on an iPhone owner without their knowledge or consent.

Google said based off their analysis, the vulnerabilities were used to steal a user’s photos and messages as well as track their location in near-realtime. The “implant” could also access the user’s on-device bank of saved passwords.

The vulnerabilities affect iOS 10 through to the current iOS 12 software version.

Google privately disclosed the vulnerabilities in February, giving Apple only a week to fix the flaws and roll out updates to its users. That’s a fraction of the 90 days typically given to software developers, giving an indication of the severity of the vulnerabilities.

Apple issued a fix six days later with iOS 12.1.4 for iPhone 5s and iPad Air and later.

Beer said it’s possible other hacking campaigns are currently in action.

The iPhone and iPad maker in general has a good rap on security and privacy matters. Recently the company increased its maximum bug bounty payout to $1 million for security researchers who find flaws that can silently target an iPhone and gain root-level privileges without any user interaction. Under Apple’s new bounty rules — set to go into effect later this year — Google would’ve been eligible for several million dollars in bounties.

When reached, a spokesperson for Apple declined to comment.

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Scientists reported Thursday they had picked up human-like electrical activity in lab-grown brains for the first time, paving the way to model neurological conditions and answer fundamental questions on how our gray matter develops.

It's not clear whether the pea-sized brains are conscious: the team behind the breakthrough suspect they're not because the activity resembles that of preterm babies, but they cannot say for certain, opening up a new ethical dimension to this area of research.

So-called "cerebral organoids" derived from adult stem cells have been around for a decade or so but have never previously developed functional neural networks.

"If you had asked me five years ago 'Would you think that a brain organoid would ever have a sophisticated network able to generate a brain oscillation?' I would say no," Alysson Muotri, a biologist at the University of California San Diego, told AFP.

A paper published by Muotri and his colleagues in the journal Cell Press said that two factors were responsible for the breakthrough. The first was a better procedure to grow stem cells, including optimizing the culture medium formula.

The second was initially surprising, but also intuitive when the researchers thought about it: simply allowing the neurons adequate time to develop, just as babies' brains develop in the womb.

"The very early stages of human neurodevelopment are encoded in our genome," explained Muotri.

The team began to detect bursts of brain waves from organoids from about two months.

The signals were sparse at first and all at the same frequency, a pattern seen in very immature human brains. But as they grew, they produced waves at different frequencies, and the signals appeared more regularly, suggesting further development of their neural networks.

Researchers then compared the brain wave patterns with those of human brains in early development, by training a machine learning algorithm with the activity recorded from 39 prematurely born babies.

The program was successful in predicting how many weeks the organoids had been developing in their dishes, suggesting they shared a similar growth trajectory to brains in their natural setting.

The point at which newborn babies attain consciousness, and the definition of consciousness itself, are both contested among scientists.

A French study in 2013 that looked at the brain activity of babies found they began to think about images of faces they were shown from the age of five months, appearing to store the visuals in their temporary "working memory" — a faculty they linked to perceptual consciousness.

Applications and ethics

Earlier, less sophisticated organoids were used to model what happens when the brain is exposed to diseases like the Zika virus which causes physical malformations.

But there are also a host of neurological conditions such as autism, epilepsy, and even psychiatric conditions where problems arise from how the brain network is wired, not from malformations.

By creating brain organoids from the stem cells of individuals with these conditions, scientists could better model them and perhaps one day find cures.

They also hope to answer more fundamental questions. Muotri said the organoids development plateaued around nine to 10 months, for reasons that aren't yet clear.

"I'm curious about that. I wonder if it's because we don't have a vascularization system to allow the nutrients to get inside, or it could be that we are just lacking stimulation" in the form of sensory input.

He hopes to test both hypotheses.

About whether the brain organoids are conscious, Muotri said he suspects not because of its early stage of development.

"But if you ask me, 'How do you know?' I would say I have no evidence either way, because we don't even know how to detect consciousness in other systems," he said.

"As we get closer to the human brain, all of these ethical questions will appear," he admitted, proposing that the field be subject to agreed-upon limits and regulation.

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Expected to come with 5G connectivity, Vivo Nex 3 is reported to be launched sometime in September. The company has confirmed that the smartphone will have a Waterfall display and also a 3.5 mm headphone jack. We should know more about the device soon.

A promo video of Vivo Nex 3 was also shared online a few days back.

Confirming a few key specs of the smartphone, a new unboxing video has popped online. As per this video, Nex 3 will come with a waterfall display with really thin bezels.

The video shows off a phone with a heavily curved display (at the edges), and buttonless design. A headphone jack is at the top. Since there was no notch on the front, it was being speculated that it might come with a pop-up selfie camera or an under-display camera, now that companies like Oppo are working on such tech. The video confirms that the phone comes with a pop-up selfie camera.

Instead of buttons, the sides feature a ribbed surface that gives haptic feedback when pressure is applied. Apparently, the feedback is so good it feels like a real button.

Looking at the back of the device, Nex 3 will feature a glass back with a circular camera module. As per previous leaks, the smartphone might come with a 64 MP camera at the back.

Vivo has also launched a 4,000 mAh battery that supports 120 W charging (Yes, as much as a laptop) and charges in barely 13 minutes. It is being speculated that Nex 3 might house this battery.

Such rapid charging must have a detrimental effect on battery life and it remains to be seen how Vivo has implemented the tech in the Nex 3.

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Any delay between your controller and the game can kill you. These are the TVs that minimize it.

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Bloomberg:
Highlights from Jack Ma and Elon Musk's discussion about AI in Shanghai, where Musk sounded the alarm and Ma argued humans would prevail  —  - Tesla's Elon Musk holds public debate with Alibaba's Jack Ma  — Ma says AI isn't a threat, Musk responds “famous last words”

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India's second moon mission Chandrayaan 2 is expected to carry out its final orbit-lowering manoeuvre around the moon this evening. The lunar-bound manoeuvre is planned between 6-7 am on 30 August using the spacecraft's onboard propulsion system. This fourth and final manoeuvre will move Chandrayaan 2 from its current 179 x 1411 km (nearest x farthest distance) elliptical orbit to a near-circular orbit of 126 x 168 km.

The Chandrayaan 2 composite has carried out three successful in-orbit manoeuvres since it entered lunar orbit — all in an attempt to lower its altitude in preparation for landing. If successful, the final manoeuvre today will put the spacecraft on a circular path that passes over the lunar poles at a distance of about 100 km from the surface. Entering this circular orbit is the mission's final milestone before the Vikram lander separates from the orbiter to make its planned soft-landing on the moon's surface on 7 September.

The approximately 100 x 100 km circular orbit is close enough for the Vikram lander, which is currently bound to the orbiter in a 'composite', to separate. The separation and landing sequences are planned for 2 September and 7 September at 1.40 am, respectively. Between these two important days, the first maps of the landing site will be created (planned for 3 and 4 September) to ensure the landing site is as safe as previously thought to make a soft-landing. This is a crucial step in the mission since ISRO's mission engineers won't be operating the spacecraft remotely. The orbiter will also be surveilling its year-long home for the first time, ensuring that no damage was caused to its instruments on the journey thus far, and conducting a thorough examination of the Vikram lander's landing site at the moon's South Polar region.

Chandrayaan 2 is expected to make its long-awaited powered descent and landing on 7 September at 1.40 am IST in a landing sequence that the ISRO Chief describes as '15 minutes of terror'.

While subsequent events in the mission won't be streamed live, you can catch live updates on the mission on our dedicated Chandrayaan 2 domain, our Twitter page, ISRO's website, or Twitter page.

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A rare genetic mutation that causes a form of muscular dystrophy affecting the limbs also protects against HIV infection, Spanish scientists reported Thursday.

The breakthrough comes a decade after American Timothy Brown, known as the "Berlin Patient," became the first person cured of HIV after a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation of the CCR5 gene.

The newly-discovered mutation concerns the Transportin 3 gene (TNPO3) and is far more rare.  It was identified several years ago among members of a family in Spain who were suffering from type 1F limb-girdle muscular dystrophy.

Doctors studying the family learned that HIV researchers were interested in the same gene because it plays a role in transporting the virus inside cells.

They then got in touch with geneticists in Madrid, who took blood samples from those family members and infected the blood with HIV — revealing a welcome surprise.

The lymphocytes — white blood cells that are an important part of the immune system — of people with the rare muscular illness were naturally resistant to HIV, it emerged.

"This helps us to understand much better the transport of the virus in the cell," Jose Alcami, a virologist at the Carlos III Health Institute and co-author of a paper published in US journal PLOS Pathogens on the subject, told AFP.

HIV is among the most studied viruses, he said, adding however that much remained to be learned, such as why five percent of patients who are infected do not develop AIDS. "There are mechanisms of resistance to infection that are very poorly understood," he said.

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