Welcome to the December 21, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Inventor of World Wide Web Wants Us to Reclaim our Data from Tech Giants
CNN
Daniel Renjifo
December 16, 2022
World Wide Web inventor and 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Tim Berners-Lee founded the startup Inrupt with John Bruce to help users reclaim their personal data. The company's Personal Online Data Store (Solid Pod) allows people to store their data in one location and govern its access, rather than have it stored by applications and websites across the Web. Users can obtain Pods from certain providers, hosted by Web services like Amazon, or operate their own server. Bruce says this setup protects user data from corporations and governments, while also reducing the chances of hacker theft. Said Berners-Lee, "I think what [users are] missing sometimes is the lack of empowerment. You need to get back to a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data."
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Facial Recognition Wielded in India to Enforce COVID Policy
Associated Press
Rishabh R. Jain
December 20, 2022
Close to 700,000 CCTV cameras have been installed in and around Hyderabad, India, since 2013. At the new Command and Control Center in the Banjara Hills neighborhood, technology is used to identify criminals using CCTV footage, facial recognition software, and a mugshot database. Local law enforcement also is using a mobile app to take photos of those who violate traffic laws and COVID-19 mask mandates, perform facial recognition scans, and connect to government and emergency services. Investments in surveillance technology have been credited with luring more private and foreign investment to the city, but some have concerns about the technology’s accuracy and legality.
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Signal Processing Algorithms Mitigate Turbulence in Free-Space Optic Tests
Aston University (U.K.)
December 20, 2022
Researchers at the U.K.'s Aston University and Glasgow University developed signal-processing algorithms that can minimize turbulence in free-space optical experiments. The findings could pave the way for "free space" Internet that does not require cables. The experiments involved the use of a commercially available photonic lantern to transmit multiple data signals simultaneously using different spatially shaped beams of light. Said Aston University's Andrew Ellis, "When a single beam was transmitted, turbulence similar to a hot sunny day destroyed the signal 50% of the time. By transmitting multiple beams of different shapes through the same telescopes and detecting the different shapes, not only did we increase the availability to more than 99%, we increased the capacity to more than 500 Gbit/s, or more than 500 ultra-fast Pure-Fibre broadband links."
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Twitter Security Flaw May Expose Videos in Direct Messages
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
December 21, 2022
Old Dominion University's Michael Nelson discovered a vulnerability in Twitter that could expose any video sent in a direct message to anyone online if a hacker correctly guesses the unique Web address for accessing the file. Nelson said attackers could generate a hash of a known video, then search for people who are sharing it. They also could exploit vulnerabilities in other software like browsers to track the addresses a person visits, then view any Twitter videos they had accessed. Twitter told Nelson the flaw is not a problem, as it requires users to disclose the URL publicly, although it might leave videos open to theft. "Just be aware that while your images enjoy a really impressive array of authentication protection [on Twitter], your videos do not," said Nelson.
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'Snakes' on the Moon? These Helpers Could Soon Join Our Lunar Mission
National Geographic
Alejandra Borunda
December 15, 2022
Engineering teams from several U.S. universities took part in a NASA competition to build robots able to navigate the Moon's difficult terrain. The winning robot, Northeastern University's Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator (COBRA), incorporates 13 mini-bots attached in a snakelike chain, which can slither and sidewind like a snake, transform into a hexagon to tumble downslope, and curl into a spiral to navigate unlevel terrain. Other designs in the competition included a six-legged bot from Arizona State University capable of scaling steep slopes, a four-legged bot from Florida State University able to race across rocks and swim through water, and reconfigurable robots developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers. California Institute of Technology researchers built a robotic gondola system, and University of Maryland researchers built a bot that navigates using legs and wheels.
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Using Drones to Monitor Volcanoes
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Germany)
December 20, 2022
Researchers at Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Heidelberg University, and Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, have developed a compact drone system that could be used to analyze the gases released by volcanoes to assess the likelihood of an impending eruption. The small commercial drones, weighing under 900 grams and outfitted with tiny lightweight sensors, can be used to monitor otherwise inaccessible emission sources. Said JGU's Thorsten Hoffmann, "We need to obtain real-time data on sulfur dioxide levels, as this lets us know when we are actually in contact with the volcanic plume, something that readily moves over time in response to atmospheric factors.”
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Critical Windows Code-Execution Vulnerability Undetected Until Now
Ars Technica
Dan Goodin
December 19, 2022
Microsoft has elevated a recently discovered Windows code-execution vulnerability from important to critical. The CVE-2022-37958 bug resembles the EternalBlue flaw used to set off WannaCry ransomware; it allows attackers to execute malware without requiring authentication, while a single exploit can trigger a chain reaction of self-replicating follow-on exploits on other susceptible systems. The bug allows attackers to remotely detonate malware by accessing the SPNEGO Extended Negotiation security mechanism while the victim uses an authenticating Windows application protocol. CVE-2022-37958 also exists in a wider range of network protocols, offering hackers more flexibility than they had when exploiting EternalBlue. Microsoft corrected the flaw in September, but elevated its threat status when IBM's Valentina Palmiotti found its remote-code-execution capability.
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Wi-Fi Could Help Identify When You're Struggling to Breathe
U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology
December 20, 2022
Researchers led by U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology scientists developed the BreatheSmart algorithm to analyze a person's movements and determine whether they have difficulty breathing via Wi-Fi routers and devices. The researchers tweaked the firmware on a Wi-Fi router to request channel state information (CSI) up to 10 times per second to receive a detailed picture of how such data was changing. The researchers had a medical training manikin mimic various breathing conditions, its chest movements altering the path traveled by the Wi-Fi signal. The BreatheSmart algorithm applied deep learning to process this data, and classified respiratory patterns simulated by the manikin with 99.54% accuracy.
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Jetsons-Style Robots Invading Chicago-Area Hospitals
Chicago Tribune
Lisa Schencker
December 20, 2022
Roughly human in shape, Moxi robots have been deployed in at least three Chicago-area hospitals amid a shortage of medical workers. Developed by Diligent Robotics and leased by the hospitals via subscription, the robots deliver medication and transport supplies and small pieces of equipment throughout the facilities. Nurses summon the robot by entering requests into an application on a tablet; when it arrives, they show their badge to a detector so they can open any of Moxi's three drawers to insert items before dispatching the unit on its task. Moxi uses sensors to navigate and has a single arm to push buttons to open doors. The concept is to have Moxi give nurses more time to care for patients, rather than having them convey items across the hospital.
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COBOL Wants to Find Out How Popular It Really Is
TechRadar
Craig Hale
December 15, 2022
Research by the COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) Working Group found that as many as 850 billion lines of the 63-year-old programming language currently exist, topping previous estimates of 200 billion to 300 billion lines of code. About half of the organizations polled indicated they anticipate their COBOL applications remaining in place for at least the next decade, with the amount of COBOL in use to increase in the coming year. Meanwhile, the COBOL Working Group is partnering with The Linux Foundation Research and The Linux Foundation Training and Certification to understand modern-day usage of and anticipated investments in COBOL. COBOL's Ed Airey said, "This significant volume of COBOL application code in the marketplace represents remarkable value for organizations and requires ongoing investment as part of a larger modernization strategy."
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Wearable Skin Patch Monitors Hemoglobin in Deep Tissues
UC San Diego Today
Emerson Dameron
December 16, 2022
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego and wearable medical device maker Softsonics have developed an electronic patch that can monitor hemoglobin and other biomolecules in deep tissues. The patch attaches to the skin to three-dimensionally map hemoglobin with submillimeter spatial resolution in deep tissues, down to centimeters under the skin. Other wearable electrochemical devices only detect biomolecules on the surface of the skin. The device's silicone polymer matrix incorporates arrays of laser diodes and piezoelectric transducers. The diodes emit pulsed lasers into the tissues for absorption by biomolecules, which discharge acoustic waves into surrounding media.
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Europe Gets Exascale Supercomputer
IEEE Spectrum
Michael Dumiak
December 18, 2022
Next year will see the installation of Europe's first exascale system, the €500-million (about $530-million) Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research (JUPITER) supercomputer, at Germany's Forschungszentrum Jülich research institute. JUPITER will include graphic processing unit-based accelerators, a central processing unit-based universal cluster module, high-capacity disk and flash storage, and dedicated backup units and tape systems for archival data storage. The system will consume 15 megawatts of power while operating, with plans to run on clean energy. Christian Plessl at Germany's Paderborn University anticipates JUPITER's potential for running high-throughput calculations will be even more demanding than what is possible on current supercomputers.
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