Long-time Slashdot reader Greymane shared this article from Wired: [I]n a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers has created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms — which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the process. "It basically means that now you have the ability to conduct or to perform a new kind of cyberattack that hasn't been seen before," says Ben Nassi, a Cornell Tech researcher behind the research. Nassi, along with fellow researchers Stav Cohen and Ron Bitton, created the worm, dubbed Morris II, as a nod to the original Morris computer worm that caused chaos across the Internet in 1988. In a research paper and website shared exclusively with WIRED, the researchers show how the AI worm can attack a generative AI email assistant to steal data from emails and send spam messages — breaking some security protections in ChatGPT and Gemini in the process...in test environments [and not against a publicly available email assistant]...

To create the generative AI worm, the researchers turned to a so-called "adversarial self-replicating prompt." This is a prompt that triggers the generative AI model to output, in its response, another prompt, the researchers say. In short, the AI system is told to produce a set of further instructions in its replies... To show how the worm can work, the researchers created an email system that could send and receive messages using generative AI, plugging into ChatGPT, Gemini, and open source LLM, LLaVA. They then found two ways to exploit the system — by using a text-based self-replicating prompt and by embedding a self-replicating prompt within an image file.

In one instance, the researchers, acting as attackers, wrote an email including the adversarial text prompt, which "poisons" the database of an email assistant using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a way for LLMs to pull in extra data from outside its system. When the email is retrieved by the RAG, in response to a user query, and is sent to GPT-4 or Gemini Pro to create an answer, it "jailbreaks the GenAI service" and ultimately steals data from the emails, Nassi says. "The generated response containing the sensitive user data later infects new hosts when it is used to reply to an email sent to a new client and then stored in the database of the new client," Nassi says. In the second method, the researchers say, an image with a malicious prompt embedded makes the email assistant forward the message on to others. "By encoding the self-replicating prompt into the image, any kind of image containing spam, abuse material, or even propaganda can be forwarded further to new clients after the initial email has been sent," Nassi says.

In a video demonstrating the research, the email system can be seen forwarding a message multiple times. The researchers also say they could extract data from emails. "It can be names, it can be telephone numbers, credit card numbers, SSN, anything that is considered confidential," Nassi says.
The researchers reported their findings to Google and OpenAI, according to the article, with OpenAI confirming "They appear to have found a way to exploit prompt-injection type vulnerabilities by relying on user input that hasn't been checked or filtered." OpenAI says they're now working to make their systems "more resilient."

Google declined to comment on the research.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A group of Russian-state hackers known for almost exclusively targeting Ukranian entities has branched out in recent months either accidentally or purposely by allowing USB-based espionage malware to infect a variety of organizations in other countries. The group -- known by many names, including Gamaredon, Primitive Bear, ACTINIUM, Armageddon, and Shuckworm -- has been active since at least 2014 and has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service by the Security Service of Ukraine. Most Kremlin-backed groups take pains to fly under the radar; Gamaredon doesn't care to. Its espionage-motivated campaigns targeting large numbers of Ukrainian organizations are easy to detect and tie back to the Russian government. The campaigns typically revolve around malware that aims to obtain as much information from targets as possible.

One of those tools is a computer worm designed to spread from computer to computer through USB drives. Tracked by researchers from Check Point Research as LitterDrifter, the malware is written in the Visual Basic Scripting language. LitterDrifter serves two purposes: to promiscuously spread from USB drive to USB drive and to permanently infect the devices that connect to such drives with malware that permanently communicates with Gamaredon-operated command and control servers. "Gamaredon continues to focus on [a] wide variety [of] Ukrainian targets, but due to the nature of the USB worm, we see indications of possible infection in various countries like USA, Vietnam, Chile, Poland and Germany," Check Point researchers reported recently. "In addition, we've observed evidence of infections in Hong Kong. All this might indicate that much like other USB worms, LitterDrifter [has] spread beyond its intended targets."

The image [here], tracking submissions of LitterDrifter to the Alphabet-owned VirusTotal service, indicates that the Gamaredon malware may be infecting targets well outside the borders of Ukraine. VirusTotal submissions usually come from people or organizations that encounter unfamiliar or suspicious-looking software on their networks and want to know if it's malicious. The data suggests that the number of infections in the US, Vietnam, Chile, Poland, and Germany combined may be roughly half of those hitting organizations inside Ukraine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year -- which was quite the surprise to the woman's team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms. A close study of the extracted worm made clear why the diagnosis was so hard to pin down: the roundworm was one known to infect snakes -- specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived -- as well as the pythons' mammalian prey. The woman is thought to be the first reported human to ever have an infection with this snake-adapted worm, and it is the first time the worm has been found burrowing through a mammalian brain. [...]

Subsequent examination determined the roundworm was Ophidascaris robertsi based on its red color and morphological features. Genetic testing confirmed the identification. The woman went on ivermectin again and another anti-parasitic drug, albendazole. Months later, her lung and liver lesions improved, and her neuropsychiatric symptoms persisted but were improved. The doctors believe the woman became infected after foraging for warrigal greens (aka New Zealand spinach) around a lake near her home that was inhabited by carpet pythons. Usually, O. robertsi adults inhabit the snakes' esophagus and stomach and release their eggs in the snakes' feces. From there, the eggs are picked up by small mammals that the snakes feed upon. The larvae develop and establish in the small mammals, growing quite long despite the small size of the animals, and the worm's life cycle is complete when the snake eats the infected prey.

Doctors hypothesize the woman picked up the eggs meant for small mammals as she foraged, ingesting them either by not fully washing or cooking the greens or by not properly washing her hands or kitchen equipment. In retrospect, the progression of her symptoms suggests an initial foodborne infection, followed by worm larva migrating from her gastrointestinal tract to multiple organs. The prednisolone, an immunosuppressive drug, may have inadvertently helped the worm migrate and get into the central nervous system. Kennedy, a co-author of the report on the woman's case, stressed the importance of washing any foods foraged or taken from a garden. She also emphasized proper kitchen safety and hand washing.

A two-year human trial conducted by James Cook University (JCU) has concluded, demonstrating positive results using low-dose human hookworm therapy to treat chronic conditions, particularly in relation to type 2 diabetes. New Atlas reports: [O]f the 24 participants who received worms, when offered a dewormer at the end of the second year of the trial, with the option to stay in the study for another 12 months, only one person chose to kill off their gut buddies -- and it was only because they had an impending planned medical procedure. "All trial participants had risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes," said Dr Doris Pierce, from JCU's Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM). "The trial delivered some considerable metabolic benefits to the hookworm-treated recipients, particularly those infected with 20 larvae."

In this double-blinded trial, 40 participants aged 27 to 50, with early signs of metabolic diseases, took part. They received either 20 or 40 microscopic larvae of the human hookworm species Necator americanus; another group took a placebo. As an intestinal parasite, the best survival skill is to keep the host healthy, which will provide a long-term stable home with nutrients 'on tap.' In return, these hookworms pay the rent in the form of creating an environment that suppresses inflammation and other adverse conditions that can upset that stable home. While the small, round worms can live for a decade, they don't multiply unless outside the body, and good hygiene means transmission risk is very low.

As for the results, those with 20 hookworms saw a Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) level drop from 3.0 units to 1.8 units within the first year, which restored their insulin resistance to a healthy range. The cohort with 40 hookworms still experienced a drop, from 2.4 to 2.0. Those who received the placebo saw their HOMA-IR levels increase from 2.2 to 2.9 during the same time frame. "These lowered HOMA-IR values indicated that people were experiencing considerable improvements in insulin sensitivity -- results that were both clinically and statistically significant," said Dr Pierce. Those with worms also had higher levels of cytokines, which play a vital role in triggering immune responses. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults. A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a "possible carcinogen," then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings -- people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago, before new science cited by WHO raised health concerns. That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right-To-Know said in a recent report.

It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi). Their involvement in developing intake guidelines represents "an obvious conflict of interest", said Gary Ruskin, US Right-To-Know's executive director. "Because of this conflict of interest, [the daily intake] conclusions about aspartame are not credible, and the public should not rely on them," he added. [...] Ilsi describes itself as a nonprofit that conducts "science for the public good", but it was founded in 1978 by a Coca-Cola executive who simultaneously worked for the company through 2021, US Right-To-Know found. Other Coca-Cola executives have worked with the group, and US Right-To-Know detailed tax returns that show millions in donations from Coca-Cola and other beverage industry players. Coke ended its official membership with the group in 2021.

Over the years, Ilsi representatives have sought to shape food policy worldwide, and Ruskin, who has written multiple peer-reviewed papers on the group, characterized the aspartame controversy as a "masterpiece in how Ilsi worms its way into these regulatory processes." US Right To Know identified six out of 13 Jefca panel members with ties to the industry group. After it released its report, the WHO acknowledged two more of its members with industry ties. In a statement to the Guardian, a WHO spokesperson defended the industry consultants' inclusion in the review process. "For the meeting on aspartame, Jefca selected the experts likely to make the best contributions to the debate," said spokesperson Fadela Chaib. She said WHO's guidelines only require disclosure of conflicts of interest within the last four years. "To our knowledge, the experts you listed by name have not participated in any Ilsi activities for at least 10 years," she said. But that partially contradicts a statement made by WHO just weeks before to the news outlet Le Parisien in which it acknowledged two people currently working with Ilsi were involved in the process. The Guardian had also asked about those two people identified in the Parisien story but were not listed "by name" in its email. The WHO told Le Parisien: "We regret that this interest was not declared by these two experts either in the written statement or orally at the opening of the meeting."

"I think the answer is no, but there are some clever people around here," writes long-time Slashdot reader shanen, "so...

"Is there any firewall or router or some other device that can adequately protect an old and no longer supported computer?" I have at least two of those that come to mind, and I might use them more often if there was a safe way to connect them to the Internet.

The specifics probably matter, though that's like opening a can of worms, but... One is a little old machine running an old and no longer supported version of Linux. Another is a Windows XP box that's too customized at a low level to run Linux.

But the big concern involves a couple of old boxes that are only alive now because Windows 10 saved them from the end-of-service of Windows 7. Right now it looks like they might outlive Windows 10, too, but two of them are not suitable for Windows 11. Plus my spouse has an old Windows 8 box now running under 10...
What happens when you combine missed security updates with internet connectivity? Share your best thoughts in the comments.

Can you use an unsafe computer safely?

Enzymes that rapidly break down plastic bags have been discovered in the saliva of wax worms, which are moth larvae that infest beehives. From a report: The enzymes are the first reported to break down polyethylene within hours at room temperature and could lead to cost-effective ways of recycling the plastic. The discovery came after one scientist, an amateur beekeeper, cleaned out an infested hive and found the larvae started eating holes in a plastic refuse bag. The researchers said the study showed insect saliva may be "a depository of degrading enzymes which could revolutionise [the cleanup of polluting waste]."

Polyethylene makes up 30% of all plastic production and is used in bags and other packaging that make up a significant part of worldwide plastic pollution. The only recycling at scale today uses mechanical processes and creates lower-value products. Chemical breakdown could create valuable chemicals or, with some further processing, new plastic, thereby avoiding the need for new virgin plastic made from oil. The enzymes can be easily synthesised and overcome a bottleneck in plastic degradation, the researchers said, which is the initial breaking of the polymer chains. That usually requires a lot of heating, but the enzymes work at normal temperatures, in water and at neutral pH.

Scientists have found more than 30 potentially new species living at the bottom of the sea. From a report: Researchers from the UK's Natural History Museum used a remotely operated vehicle to collect specimens from the abyssal plains of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the central Pacific. Previously, creatures from this area had been studied only from photographs. The study, published in the journal Zookeys, found there is a high species diversity of larger organisms in the abyss. Of the 55 specimens recovered, 48 were of different species. The animals found include segmented worms, invertebrates from the same family as centipedes, marine animals from the same family as jellyfish, and different types of coral. Thirty-six specimens were found at more than 4,800 metres deep, two were collected on a seamount slope at 4,125 metres, and 17 were found at between 3,095 and 3,562 metres deep.

The number of users on Wish has plummeted, and its stock price has dropped. Former employees point to an emphasis on short-term growth over customer service. From a report: There were unbelievable bargains on "bestdeeal9," a store hosted on the e-commerce platform Wish, including a $2,700 smart TV being sold for $1 and a gaming computer advertised for $1.30. But none of the offers were real, and Wish knew it. The company, an online novelty emporium that had more than $2 billion in sales last year by dangling hard-to-believe discounts, created "bestdeeal9" as an experiment. Listings that had been removed for violating Wish policies were reposted on "bestdeeal9" and used in part to track whether shoppers complained when their orders never arrived. Employees working on the project repeatedly pushed executives to take down the store, arguing that it was both illegal and unethical, according to three employees familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. More than 213,000 people made purchases from the store, according to an internal document reviewed by The New York Times, though the document did not say how many received their items.

Tarek Fahmy, then the senior vice president of engineering in charge of the project, ended it in 2020 after it operated for several months, the employees said. Mr. Fahmy, who has since left Wish, did not respond to requests for comment. Wish declined to comment on "bestdeeal9." Several employees said "bestdeeal9" is indicative of the kind of practices -- giving priority to short-term growth over customer service -- that initially turned Wish into an advertising and retail behemoth but have now left it desperately trying to right itself. Since its founding in 2010, Wish had many of the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley success story: started by a young coder and his college friend, rumored to have turned down a $10 billion acquisition offer from Amazon and described by Recode as an app "that could be the next Walmart." It developed a reputation as the dollar store of the internet, shipping odd gimcracks and thingamajigs directly from vendors in China. It blitzed shoppers with viral online ads for $1 plastic tongue clamps, $3 "leather face diapers" for cats and a $2 handful of worms.

[...] Peter Szulczewski, the company's former chief executive, once compared Wish's success to Donald J. Trump's 2016 election victory, explaining that both the company and the candidate had appealed to "the invisible half" of Americans who were routinely overlooked by political pundits and Silicon Valley elites. But Wish squandered its early promise, according to interviews with nine former employees. Deceptive experiments like "bestdeeal9" drove customers away, as did low product standards and unreliable shipping. When the rising cost of ads forced it to scale back its marketing, the company struggled to attract new shoppers. Wish is now scrambling to turn itself around. The company declined to make its newly hired crop of executives available but said in a statement that "over the past six months, Wish has undergone a massive transformation." The company said: "We have already seen significant traction and remain committed to executing against our priorities and building a long-term platform for growth."

Officials in Florida are again battling a highly invasive, extraordinarily destructive giant snail species that also happens to be capable of spreading parasitic worms that invade human brains. From a report: The giant African land snail (GALS) -- aka Lissachatina fulica -- can grow up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) long and is considered "one of the most invasive pests on the planet," according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It ravenously feasts on over 500 plant species -- including many valuable fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals -- while prolifically spawning, pushing out several thousand eggs in its multiyear life span.

In late June, Florida state officials confirmed the presence of GALS on a property in Pasco County, on the west-central coast of the state, just north of Tampa. They have since set up a quarantine zone around the property and began snail-killing pesticide treatments last week. While the snails are a grave threat to agriculture and natural vegetation in the state, the invasive mollusks also pose a health risk. They're known to transmit rat lungworm parasites, which can invade the human central nervous system and cause a type of meningitis. For this reason, officials warn people not to handle the mammoth snails without gloves.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Scientists in Australia have discovered that superworms can live and even grow on a diet of only polystyrene, also known colloquially as Styrofoam. Superworm is a common name for the larval stages of the darkling beetle (Zophobas morio). The researchers described their finding as a "first step" in discovering natural enzymes that could be used to recycle this type of plastic. "We envision that polystyrene waste will be collected, mechanically shredded, and then degraded in bioreactors with an enzyme cocktail," said Chris Rinke, a scientist at the University of Queensland and an author of a paper published on Thursday in the journal Microbial Genomics.

In recent years, scientists globally have been looking for microorganisms that can digest plastic, which is how natural materials like wood biodegrade. The idea is that some kind of enzyme engineered from the gut of an insect or bacteria could be used to digest difficult-to-recycle plastic so it could be made into new plastic products, which would reduce the need for virgin plastic. Used for things such as coffee cups and packing peanuts, polystyrene is one of the most common plastics in production. It accounts for "up to 7-10% of the total non-fibre plastic production," according to the paper.

Experimenters divided worms into three groups and fed each a different diet: bran, polystyrene or a starvation diet. The worms that lived on polystyrene were not as healthy as those eating bran, but they were able to eat the Styrofoam and gain weight and complete their life cycle. However, the report also found that the diet had "negative impacts on host gut microbiome diversity and health" of the worms. In other words, they could eat plastics, but it had a cost to them. It would theoretically be possible to keep thousands of worms in an industrial setting to digest plastics. But the researchers say their next goal is to identify and enhance the enzyme the worms use for future applications.

Mike Bouma (Slashdot reader #85,252) writes: With the release of the A500 mini (which also supports A1200 games) and its side loading feature you may be interested to get started with Amiga Retro games development. This is why I collected some recent Amiga games development tutorials and added some additional information.

A popular game programming language on the Amiga is Blitz BASIC or AmiBlitz as the freely available and open source version is called now. The latest version (v 3.9.2) was recently released. The best known game developed with Blitz Basic is Team 17's original Worms game for the Amiga 500 in 1995. Meanwhile the Worms franchise has sold over 75 million game units across many different platforms. Daedalus2097 has just started an AmiBlitz video tutorial series on Twitch.tv: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. An example AmiBlitz game currently under development is Super Metal Hero (A1200) and here's a shooter level in the game.

REDPILL is a 2D game creation tool written in AmiBlitz by Carlos Peris and is designed to empower people to create many games for Amiga without programming knowledge. It's still early days but the first games are already being designed using this tool. An example game designed with this tool is Guardian — The legend of flaming sword.

The "Scorpion Engine" developed by Erik 'Earok' Hogan is a closed source game engine with all software developed for it open source. It offers a modern Windows IDE for development. In this video, Erik Hogan guides Micheal Parent from Bitbeam Cannon step by step as they create a legit retro video game from scratch. Various new games have and are being developed using this engine. An already released game is Amigo the Fox and an example game under development is Rick Dangerous (A1200 version).

If you want to dig deeper into Amiga coding then here's a series of Assembly game development tutorials by Phaze101. An example game currently being written in assembler is RESHOOT PROXIMA 3 (A1200).

If you are unexperienced with coding but would like to then here are some Amos (BASIC) tutorials for you: Rob Smith's How to program Wordle in AMOS on the AMIGA and Lets Code Santa's Present Drop Game.

In the past five years, reports of staggering insect declines have stoked anxiety and debate concerning the fate of the "little things that run the world," as the late biologist E. O. Wilson once called them. As for the how and why of these declines, the prime culprits are habitat destruction, rampant use of pesticides, and climate change. But new research published March 30 in Biology Letters adds an unexpected suspect, at least for a large swath of North America: the earthworm. From a report: The study looked at 60 plots in an aspen and poplar forest in Alberta, Canada, and found that as the numbers of earthworms wriggling in the soil and leaf litter increased, the diversity and abundance of invertebrates aboveground decreased. These results might sound surprising, since earthworms are widely considered to be helpful garden residents. Worms earned their reputation by aerating and mixing soil with their burrows and releasing locked up nutrients in their castings, all of which can help certain plants thrive.

But this new study is part of a growing body of research suggesting that at least in the forests of northern North America, earthworms may not be the slimy angels of the underworld we tend to think they are. "When people talk about insect decline, they rarely talk about the soil," says Nico Eisenhauer, a soil ecologist at Leipzig University in Germany and one of the authors of the new study. "Many of the insects and invertebrates that are in decline have life phases in the soil. What you don't see flying around now has first disappeared from the soil, and earthworms can fundamentally alter soil conditions."

Earthworms' subterranean engineering isn't a problem in their native ecosystems, but in the northern half of North America, the glaciers of the last ice age wiped out virtually all soil-dwelling worms more than 10,000 years ago. The ice sheets covered nearly all of Canada, most of the northeast U.S., and much of the upper Midwest. When the ice receded, forests returned but the worms did not because they can only expand their range by a maximum of about 30 feet a year. These northerly ecosystems evolved for millennia in the absence of earthworms. Without worms munching through fallen foliage and churning the soil, these forests accumulated thick layers of leaf litter, which came to support a vast array of animals, fungi, and plants. Eisenhauer says even non-scientists can appreciate the difference.

Longtime Slashdot reader Mike Bouma writes: Retro Recipes LLC has previewed prototype serial #01 of the "A500 mini" Amiga retro console on YouTube. The console comes with 25 preinstalled games including Worms: The Director's Cut, Simon the Sorcerer, The Chaos Engine, Super Cars 2 and Speedball 2.

Additional games can be played in WHDLoad (.lha archived) format through a USB stick. The device comes included with a gamepad and mouse that can also be bought separately. The A500 mini has a HDMI video output and is scheduled for release on April 8th 2022.

Low-tech approach can quintuple yield and slash need for soil pesticide. An anonymous reader shares a report: Potato cyst nematodes are a clever pest. These microscopic worms wriggle through the soil, homing in the roots of young potato plants and cutting harvests by up to 70%. They are challenging to get rid of, too: The eggs are protected inside the mother's body, which toughens after death into a cyst that can survive in the soil for years. Now, researchers have shown a simple pouch made of paper created from banana tree fibers disrupts the hatching of cyst nematodes and prevents them from finding the potato roots. The new technique has boosted yields fivefold in trials with small-scale farmers in Kenya, where the pest has recently invaded, and could dramatically reduce the need for pesticides. The strategy may benefit other crops as well.

"It's an important piece of work," says Graham Thiele, a research director at the International Potato Center who was not involved with the study. But, "There's still quite a lot of work to take it from a nice finding to a real-life solution for farmers in East Africa," he cautions. Soil nematodes are a problem for many kinds of crops. For potatoes, the golden cyst nematode (Globodera rostochiensis) is a worldwide threat. Plants with infected, damaged roots have yellowish, wilting leaves. Their potatoes are smaller and often covered with lesions, so they can't be sold. In temperate countries, worms can be controlled by alternating potatoes with other crops, spraying the soil with pesticides, and planting varieties bred to resist infection. These approaches aren't yet feasible in many developing countries, in part because pesticides are expensive and resistant varieties of potatoes aren't available for tropical climates. In addition, small-scale farmers, who can make decent money selling potatoes, are often reluctant to rotate their planting with less valuable crops.

Ivermectin is making the rounds again online after Joe Rogan casually mentioned he took the drug after testing positive for COVID-19. Some researchers claim it helps treat symptoms of the virus; others, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have yet to make that determination. "While there are approved uses for ivermectin in people and animals, it is not approved for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19," the FDA says in a FAQ.

So where did this drug come from and why have people been using it to try and treat COVID-19? WFAA, an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, helps answer those questions: In the 1970s, Japanese biochemist Satoshi Omura discovered the avermectin family of compounds, which are a series of drugs used to treat parasites and insect pests. Ivermectin is one of these drugs. Ivermectin has a mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It was modified and first introduced as medicine in 1981. It soon became registered around the world to treat parasitic worms in cattle, sheep, and other animals. It can be taken as a pill or applied to the skin depending on why it's needed.

By 1988, ivermectin was approved as a medical treatment in humans. This "wonder drug," as many called it, was prescribed to treat illnesses, which include head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis, and lymphatic filariasis. Since its discovery, ivermectin has been used by more than 700 million people in the world specifically to treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, according to a National Institutes of Health study.

A medical study led by Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar in Egypt was published in November 2020. It said that hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who received this antiparasitic drug improved more quickly and had a better chance of staying alive. It was retracted in July. Multiple medical agencies -- including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- have been unable to find any evidence this drug helps with COVID-19. The CDC put out a press release in August, making clear that ivermectin is not authorized or approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. In that same CDC press release, health experts also warned about the dangers that can come from taking ivermectin incorrectly.

"The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt," reports the Guardian, "after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to 'ethical concerns'." The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin — a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice — in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November. It claimed to be a randomised control trial, a type of study crucial in medicine because it is considered to provide the most reliable evidence on the effectiveness of interventions due to the minimal risk of confounding factors influencing the results...

A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper, leading to the retraction... He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised. It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. "Humorously, this led to them changing 'severe acute respiratory syndrome' to 'extreme intense respiratory syndrome' on one occasion," Lawrence said.

The data also looked suspicious to Lawrence... "In their paper, the authors claim that four out of 100 patients died in their standard treatment group for mild and moderate Covid-19," Lawrence said. "According to the original data, the number was 0, the same as the ivermectin treatment group. In their ivermectin treatment group for severe Covid-19, the authors claim two patients died, but the number in their raw data is four..." Lawrence contacted an Australian chronic disease epidemiologist from the University of Wollongong, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, and a data analyst affiliated with Linnaeus University in Sweden who reviews scientific papers for errors, Nick Brown, for help analysing the data and study results more thoroughly... "The main error is that at least 79 of the patient records are obvious clones of other records," Brown told the Guardian. "It's certainly the hardest to explain away as innocent error, especially since the clones aren't even pure copies. There are signs that they have tried to change one or two fields to make them look more natural..."

Meyerowitz-Katz told the Guardian that "this is one of the biggest ivermectin studies out there", and it appeared to him the data was "just totally faked".
Meta-analyses incorporating the "just totally faked" data were then published in Oxford Academic's Open Forum Infectious Diseases and in the American Journal of Therapeutics.

Meanwhile, the Guardian also notes a new (and peer-reviewed) paper that was just published last month in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Its finding? Iermectin is "not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients".

According to Politico, "Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are [...] planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages." The White House is also planning to work with social media platforms and traditional media outlets to combat misinformation and ultimately improve vaccination rates. TmoNews reports: The White House could ask carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T to step in and stop the spread of these text messages. This is one way they hope they will be able to get their vaccination message across better and eliminate misinterpretation. There is no word yet on whether or not the White House has reached out to these carriers to help them screen anti-vax messages. But if it does, it will be interesting to see how this will be acted upon and which tools would be used. Then again, it could open a can of worms with potential issues that would violate customer privacy and an individual's right to free speech. "We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover," White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. "When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out."

A multi-platform Python-based malware targeting Windows and Linux devices has now been upgraded to worm its way into Internet-exposed VMware vCenter servers unpatched against a remote code execution vulnerability. BleepingComputer reports: The malware, dubbed FreakOut by CheckPoint researchers in January (aka Necro and N3Cr0m0rPh), is an obfuscated Python script designed to evade detection using a polymorphic engine and a user-mode rootkit that hides malicious files dropped on compromised systems. FreakOut spreads itself by exploiting a wide range of OS and apps vulnerabilities and brute-forcing passwords over SSH, adding the infected devices to an IRC botnet controlled by its masters. The malware's core functionality enables operators to launch DDoS attacks, backdoor infected systems, sniff and exfiltrate network traffic, and deploy XMRig miners to mine for Monero cryptocurrency.

As Cisco Talos researchers shared in a report published today, FreakOut's developers have been hard at work improving the malware's spreading capabilities since early May, when the botnet's activity has suddenly increased. "Although the bot was originally discovered earlier this year, the latest activity shows numerous changes to the bot, ranging from different command and control (C2) communications and the addition of new exploits for spreading, most notably vulnerabilities in VMWare vSphere, SCO OpenServer, Vesta Control Panel and SMB-based exploits that were not present in the earlier iterations of the code," Cisco Talos security researcher Vanja Svajcer said. FreakOut bots scan for new systems to target either by randomly generating network ranges or on its masters' commands sent over IRC via the command-and-control server. For each IP address in the scan list, the bot will try to use one of the built-in exploits or log in using a hardcoded list of SSH credentials.

Bloomberg's William Turton and Joshua Brustein have published a profile of the 23-year-old proprietor of VanwaTech, an internet provider in Vancouver, Wash. that "provides tech support to the U.S. networks of White nationalists and conspiracy theorists banned by the likes of Amazon." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: Two and a half months before extremists invaded the U.S. Capitol, the far-right wing of the internet suffered a brief collapse. All at once, in the final weeks of the country's presidential campaign, a handful of prominent sites catering to White supremacists and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy movement stopped functioning. To many of the forums' most devoted participants, the outage seemed to prove the American political struggle was approaching its apocalyptic endgame. "Dems are making a concerted move across all platforms," read one characteristic tweet. "The burning of the land foreshadows a massive imperial strike back in the next few days."

In fact, there'd been no conspiracy to take down the sites; they'd crashed because of a technical glitch with VanwaTech, a tiny company in Vancouver, Wash., that they rely on for various kinds of network infrastructure. They went back online with a simple server reset about an hour later, after the proprietor, 23-year-old Nick Lim, woke up from a nap at his mom's condo. Lim founded VanwaTech in late 2019. He hosts some websites directly and provides others with technical services including protection against certain cyberattacks; his annual revenue, he says, is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although small, the operation serves clients including the Daily Stormer, one of America's most notorious online destinations for overt neo-Nazis, and 8kun, the message board at the center of the QAnon movement, whose adherents were heavily involved in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Lim exists in a singularly odd corner of the business world. He says he's not an extremist, just an entrepreneur with a maximalist view of free speech. "There needs to be a me, right?" he says, while eating pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near his headquarters. "Once you get to the point where you look at whether content is safe or unsafe, as soon as you do that, you've opened a can of worms." At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting. In interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek early in 2020, Lim said he didn't really know what QAnon was and had no opinion about Donald Trump. What's undeniable is the niche Lim is filling. His blip of a company is providing essential tech support for the kinds of violence-prone hate groups and conspiracists that tend to get banned by mainstream providers such as Amazon Web Services.