Day: February 12, 2020

It’s generally accepted that Macs are safer and less malware-prone than Windows PCs. Well, not anymore. A new report says that for the first time ever, Mac-specific threats outpaced PCs by a rate of 2:1 in 2019.

The report comes from Malwarebytes, an antivirus software maker. In its 2020 State of Malware Report, the firm says it found the volume of Mac threats increased year-over-year by more than 400 percent. While it attributes some of that number to a larger Mac userbase, the company calculated the number of threats per endpoint on both Mac OS and Windows. The results? In 2019, the company detected an average of 11 threats per Mac endpoint compared to 5.8 threats per Windows PC endpoint. Compared to 2018, Mac endpoint threats rose from 4.8 to 11.

As for the reason behind the drastic increase, Malwarebytes says it’s likely due to increased market share. As more people use Apple computers, they become more attractive to bad actors. The report also notes that macOS’s built-in security has yet to sufficiently tackle adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) compared to malware.

According to the report, Mac threats also differ significantly from those faced by PCs. While Windows machines are more likely to face traditional types of malware, the most prevalent Mac threats are adware and PUPs. The latter mostly consists of “cleaning” apps like MacKeeper and MacBooster. On the adware side, NewTab topped the list. NewTab is an adware family that redirects browser searches to earn “illicit affiliate revenue” and is often spread via fake flight or package tracking pages, fake maps, and face directions. Overall, adware and PUPs are considered less dangerous than traditional malware. That said, the increased number indicates these types of threats are becoming more aggressive.

Adware is also a problem for Windows too, with roughly 24 million detections on PCs. That’s an increase of roughly 13 percent for consumers and 463 percent for businesses. Also, seven out of the top ten consumer threats were some sort of adware variant. Windows PCs were also targeted by Emotet and Trickbot, two types of Trojan botnets, as well as new ransomware including Ryuk, Sodinokibi, and Phobos.

The main takeaway is that no, your Apple computer isn’t more immune to malware and maybe you should take security more seriously. Adware freaking sucks.

Scientists in Brazil say they’ve made a mysterious discovery. They claim to have found a virus made of genetic material never before seen elsewhere. But you likely have nothing to fear from this virus: It seems to only hunt amoebas.

The find is detailed in a paper released last month on the preprint website bioRxiv. Research showcased on bioRxiv hasn’t yet gone through peer review, and the data on the virus’s genetic structure, or genome, hasn’t been made public yet. This doesn’t mean the findings aren’t legitimate (nor does something being peer reviewed mean it’s definitely “true”), it just means a little more skepticism is warranted upfront.

According to the paper, the DNA-based virus was found in amoebas living in the muddy waters of an artificial lake in the town of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, called Pampulha. The early name given to the virus—Yaravirus brasiliensis—is a reference to Yara, an important mythical figure among the indigenous tribes that once resided in Brazil, the authors wrote.

They were unable to find any likely relatives to Yaravirus after searching publicly available databases of viruses. And when they dug deeper, they found that more than 90 percent of its genes had never been documented before or had any connections to other known genes. Genes with no known evolutionary history are called ORFan genes in microbiology (pronounced orphan), potentially making Yaravirus an almost entirely orphan microbe.

“Here we report the discovery of Yaravirus, a new lineage of amoebal virus with a puzzling origin and phylogeny,” the authors wrote.

Scientists have found all sorts of viruses living inside amoebas, the usually single-celled lifeforms that move using finger-like projections from their body.

These viruses have all been much bigger, genetically speaking, than the viruses that infect plants, animals, and people, leading to their classification as giant viruses. Giant viruses aren’t just bigger—they’re much more complex, allowing them to do things other viruses typically can’t do. Where in the history of life these viruses arose, including whether giant viruses could represent close relatives to the ancestor that gave rise to all viruses, is still unknown.

The researchers behind this new paper had previously discovered another group of giant viruses, called tupanviruses. But to make things even weirder, Yaravirus is far too small to be a giant virus, heightening the mystery of where exactly it came from. Provided the researchers are correct in their analysis, that could mean Yaravirus is either a very strange member of the giant virus family or the first known virus of its kind.

In any case, the authors wrote, the discovery “reflects the variability existing in the viral world and how much potential of new viral genomes are still to be discovered.”

For all the talk about self-driving cars taking over our roads and literally relegating human drivers to the back seat, it’s in the ancient practice of agriculture where autonomous, artificial intelligence vehicles seem destined to go into service first. The latest evidence? Weed-killing robots.

A French company called Naïo Technologies has developed three different robot electric vehicles capable of removing weeds from row crops, tackling the two-headed farming quagmires of high costs for removing weeds and persistent shortages of laborers willing to actually do it. And it’s coming to the U.S. In addition to having around 150 robots in use in Canada, Europe and Japan, Naïo has begun testing its autonomous weeders at 15 different commercial farms in California, Modern Farmer reports. The company last month said it had raised €14 million (about $15.29 million), which it’s using in part to push into the U.S. market.

“Our weeding robots respect both the environment and man,” spokeswoman Anouck Lefebvre tells Modern Farmer. “They provide a solution to tackle farmworker shortages, reduce the strenuous physical workload of hand weeding, and limit the use of chemical weed killers.”

It’s hardly the only company working on autonomous weed-killing technology. Ag giant John Deere in 2017 splashed out $305 million to acquire a Silicon Valley startup that developed a precision herbicide-spraying robot called Lettuce Bot, while a San Francisco company called FarmWise Labs, which has developed an orange robot weed-picker that resembles a tank, told Digital Trends it has raised $14.5 million in venture funding.

The technology bodes well for a less chemical-intensive future of farming, with the prospect of disrupting Big Ag. A study by UC Davis found that hand-weeding costs about $300 per acre, while the pesticide, herbicide and genetically modified seed market that depends on farmers dousing fields indiscriminately with chemicals is estimated to be worth $100 billion.

Naïo has developed three different weed-picking robots: the lightweight Oz, designed for small farms and greenhouses; Ted, a hooped vehicle for vineyards that is already in use in southern France; and Dino, the flagship vehicle designed to tackle weeds on large-scale vegetable farms. All combine precision GPS navigation, mechanical weeding arms that use machine learning to identify weeds, and the ability to map out crops and send data to farmers. They also feature nifty tank-turning capability to make U-turns in tight spaces.

The smallest model, the Oz, relies on four, 110-watt electric motors and either 24-volt lead or higher-range lithium batteries, while Dino relies on lithium batteries and four electric motors, with a top speed of about 2.5 mph, a run time of up to eight hours and the touted ability to cover up to 12 acres per day.

Naïo tells Modern Farmer it plans to open a center in California later this year to store, maintain and market its robots, with a commercial launch expected stateside later this year as well. All this technology predictably isn’t cheap — the Dino runs about $220,000 — but Naïo envisions renting them to farmers or helping them on financing options. Trials in the U.S. have reportedly generated promising results.

It’s difficult to say which company will be first to market with self-driving weed-pickers, but it seems safe to say that their day is coming soon.

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