An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group of academics have found three new security flaws in 4G and 5G, which they say can be used to intercept phone calls and track the locations of cell phone users. The findings are said to be the first time vulnerabilities have affected both 4G and the incoming 5G standard, which promises faster speeds and better security, particularly against law enforcement use of cell site simulators, known as "stingrays." But the researchers say that their new attacks can defeat newer protections that were believed to make it more difficult to snoop on phone users. [Rafiul Hussain, one of the co-authors of the paper, along with Ninghui Li and Elisa Bertino at Purdue University, and Mitziu Echeverria and Omar Chowdhury at the University of Iowa are set to reveal their findings at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego on Tuesday. The paper, seen by TechCrunch prior to the talk, details the attacks: the first is Torpedo, which exploits a weakness in the paging protocol that carriers use to notify a phone before a call or text message comes through. The researchers found that several phone calls placed and cancelled in a short period can trigger a paging message without alerting the target device to an incoming call, which an attacker can use to track a victim's location. Knowing the victim's paging occasion also lets an attacker hijack the paging channel and inject or deny paging messages, by spoofing messages like Amber alerts or blocking messages altogether, the researchers say. Torpedo opens the door to two other attacks: Piercer, which the researchers say allows an attacker to determine an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) on the 4G network; and the aptly named IMSI-Cracking attack, which can brute force an IMSI number in both 4G and 5G networks, where IMSI numbers are encrypted. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are all affected by Torpedo, "and the attacks can be carried out with radio equipment costing as little as $200," the report adds. One U.S. network is reportedly vulnerable to the Piercer attack, but the researcher wouldn't name which one.

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Last week, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried an Israeli-made spacecraft named Beresheet beyond the grasp of Earth's gravity and sent it on its way to the surface of the moon. On board Beresheet is a specially designed disc encoded with a 30-million-page archive of human civilization built to last billions of years into the future. From a report: The backup for humanity has been dubbed "The Lunar Library" by its creator, the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF). "The idea is to place enough backups in enough places around the solar system, on an ongoing basis, that our precious knowledge and biological heritage can never be lost," the nonprofit's co-founder Nova Spivack told CNET via email. The disc aboard Beresheet is about the size and thickness of a DVD, but consists of 25 stacked thin nickel films that AMF insists can resist radiation, extreme temperatures and other harsh conditions found in space for billions of years. There is, of course, no way to test how long it will last, but if it survives as long as hoped, the disc may even be around longer than the moon itself. The top four layers are actually filled with 60,000 pages of tiny analog images that can be viewed with optical microscope technology that's been around for centuries. The images include a sort of users' guide explaining human language, the contents of the disc and how to access the deeper layers containing compressed digital data.

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Leading US paleontologists are calling for a worldwide halt to the sale of vertebrate dinosaur fossils. The booming market for specimens, driven by their popularity with wealthy private collectors, including Hollywood stars, is pushing up prices and putting them out of reach of museums and scientists, they say. From a report: While the art market is organized around brand-name artists, dinosaur sales are all about celebrity species, with a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton fetching up to $10m, although the velociraptor is the most prized. The price tag for a triceratops's skull is $170,000 to $400,000, and a diplodocus is $570,000 to $1.1m. Last year a complete egg of an aepyornis maximus, otherwise known as an elephant bird, sold for $130,000 -- roughly five times what it would have gone for a decade earlier. Last year the US Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology (SVP) called on the Parisian auction house Aguttes to cancel a sale inside the Eiffel tower that contained just one lot: a 29-foot-long dinosaur of a yet-to-be identified species. The winning bidder paid $2.3m for the piece. Executive members of the society drew attention to the claim that the winning bidder could name the species, calling that assertion "misleading because the naming of new species is governed by the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature." "The sale of all fossils is inappropriate," says Catherine Badgley, former president of the SVP, which represents more than 2,200 international palaeontologists. "Many, particularly vertebrate fossils, are rarely common, and it's certainly not the case for dinosaurs. The commodification is in principle inappropriate because it motivates unscrupulous people."

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I am a first generation American.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia says it is up to voters to decide who is fit to assume the presidency.

A key player in the Iranian government for years, Javad Zarif announced he's stepping down as foreign minister.

Afghan Taliban's co-founder holds talks with the US in an attempt to bring an end to more than 17 years of war.

US announces sanctions against four state governors, asks Latin American countries to increase pressure on Maduro.

Drupal 7, which was first released in January 2011, will reach end of life (EOL) in November of 2021, the Drupal Association said today. What this means for your Drupal 7 sites is, as of November 2021: 1. Drupal 7 will no longer be supported by the community at large. The community at large will no longer create new projects, fix bugs in existing projects, write documentation, etc. around Drupal 7. 2. There will be no more core commits to Drupal 7. 3. The Drupal Security Team will no longer provide support or Security Advisories for Drupal 7 core or contributed modules, themes, or other projects. Reports about Drupal 7 vulnerabilities might become public creating 0 day exploits. 4. All Drupal 7 releases on all project pages will be flagged as not supported. Maintainers can change that flag if they desire to. 5. On Drupal 7 sites with the update status module, Drupal Core will show up as unsupported. 6. After November 2021, using Drupal 7 may be flagged as insecure in 3rd party scans as it no longer gets support. 7. Best practice is to not use unsupported software, it would not be advisable to continue to build new Drupal 7 sites. 8. Now is the time to start planning your migration to Drupal 8.

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In a series of emergency decrees, embattled president also outlaws trading or hoarding subsidised fuel products.

Assad meets Iran's Khamenei and Rouhani on his first trip to any country but Russia since Syrian civil war began.

Sprint has shared some of its plans when it comes to 5G service in the U.S. The company announced at MWC in Barcelona that mobile customers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City can expect 5G service as soon as May 2019. From a report: If you don't live in one of those cities, maybe you live in Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix or Washington D.C. Sprint also promises 5G coverage in those cities soon after the initial launch, at some point before the end of June 2019. Overall, Sprint expects to cover 1,000 square miles in nine cities by the end of the first half of 2019. It's going to take years to roll out 5G coverage across the U.S.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: News subscription service Scroll, which is yet to launch to consumers but has received the backing of several top publishers, courted another major player today: Mozilla. The browser maker says it will work with Scroll to better understand how consumers react to ad-free experiences on the web and subscription-based funding models. As part of the deal, Mozilla said it would test features and product ideas provided by Scroll, which itself has been conducting internal tests with a number of outlets. Small groups of Firefox users will be invited at random to share feedback and also respond to surveys, Mozilla said.

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Some civil society activists backed the opposition party's rejection of the initial results and 'collusion' accusations.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will push for second Brexit vote, party statement says.