Archive for October 24th, 2008
Scientists Erase Mice Memories
In the like of “Total Recall“, “Johnny Mnemonic” and most recently “Paycheck“, scientist have been able to erase specific memories from mice, without damaging the brain.
By manipulating important levels of protein in the brain, certain memories can be erased according to a group of scientist lead by Joe Tsien from the Medical College of Georgia.
Although some experts have suggested that it could be valuable to erase certain memories in people, like traumas during war, Tsien doubts that this could be achieved the way it was done with mice.
“Our work reveals a molecular mechanism of how that can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells,” says the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cognitive and Systems Neurobiology.
Tsien also argued about the ethical and moral implications of erasing people’s memories.
Memory has four distinct stages: learning, consolidation, storage and recall. It has been difficult to dissect the molecular mechanisms of these stages because researchers lacked techniques to manipulate proteins quickly. For example, when researchers disable a gene suspected to play a role in the memory process, the deletion typically occurred throughout the entire period so it was impossible to tell which parts of processes were impaired. Previous technology would take several days to switch off a protein, which is the product of a gene.
All of our memories, including those which are emotionally painful have their purpose. It is those memories and experiences which shape our character and makes us who we are.
Medical College of Georgia News – Memories selectively, safely erased in mice
Technology Review – Selectively Deleting Memories
Worm Takes Advantage Of Microsoft Flaw
Just as I had predicted it would happen, there are already reports that a worm exploiting the hole in the 
“Server Service” has been seen in the wild. Microsoft released yesterday a critical “out-of-band” patch (MS08-067) release having known about the issue for a while.
Milw0rm, an exploit tracking Internet site has posted the exploit code required to overflow the stack. The code can be downloaded here.
Symantec is tracking an exploit “Bloodhound.Exploit.212″, via Bugtraq ID 31874 using this vulnerability, but they report it is still not widespread. Other reports points to a certain file “n2.exe” being downloaded to compromise computers, as McAfee has been tracking here.
The worm as already received several names including Gimmiv and Dropper. The guys over at Threat Expert Blog have a pretty detailed explanation of how the code works and what it does.
Both Symantec and McAfee said Friday that they had seen only a very small number of attacks based on this exploit, but Symantec says that, starting Thursday evening, they found a 25 percent jump in network scans looking for potentially vulnerable machines. That could be a sign that more attacks are coming.
It is not likely that large networks will have ports 139 and/or 445 open to the Internet and even most DSL/Cable modem router will not allow this kind of inbound traffic either, but I have no doubt this will cause a false sense of security among pseudo-system admins and as this worm evolves and becomes more sophisticated, it will transverse corporate perimeter firewall through malware and spyware and then spread within the network wreaking havoc.
