Author: Brian Carnell

Yubico Releases YubiKey 5 Series Featuring FIDO2/WebAuthn Support

Of course after I buy a half-dozen YubiKey 4 keys, the company goes and releases the YubiKey 5 series with FIDO2/WebAuthn support. 🙂

Single-Factor Authentication (Passwordless) with the YubiKey 5 Series – The YubiKey 5 security keys can be used alone for strong single-factor authentication, requiring no username or password to login — just tap or touch to authenticate.

Second-Factor Authentication with the YubiKey 5 Series – Used alongside a username and password, the YubiKey 5 series offers a strong second factor of authentication. This is the YubiKey integration that exists today with services like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, and it is most familiar to our users.

Multi-Factor Authentication (Passwordless + PIN + Touch) with the YubiKey 5 Series – The YubiKey 5 series can be used in conjunction with a PIN for user verification. In this case, the PIN unlocks the device locally and touch is still required for the YubiKey to perform the authentication.

Really looking forward to seeing what the uptake is on the passwordless single-factor authentication turns out to be, especially as Google’s recently released hardware authentication key also supports it.

I had some concerns about physical security with the passwordless authorization, but it appears that users can add a pin to the authentication keys in that setup if desired.

Eight Year Old American Girl Pulls Sword from Swedish Lake

Personally, I welcome our new 8-year-old overlord.

Sword

It was initially reported that the sword was at least 1,000 years old, but the museum later contacted The Local to clarify that they believe it may be even older, estimated to date back to the 5th or 6th century AD, pre-Viking Age. The find has prompted huge interest from archaeologists and historians.

Researchers Use Genetic Engineering to Wipe Out Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes in Lab

In September,  Nature Biotechnology published a paper by researchers describing their efforts to use CRISPR-Cas9 in a laboratory setting to prevent reproduction in a population of mosquitoes that transmit malaria to human beings,

In the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae, the gene doublesex (Agdsx) encodes two alternatively spliced transcripts, dsx-female (AgdsxF) and dsx-male (AgdsxM), that control differentiation of the two sexes. The female transcript, unlike the male, contains an exon (exon 5) whose sequence is highly conserved in all Anopheles mosquitoes so far analyzed. We found that CRISPR–Cas9-targeted disruption of the intron 4–exon 5 boundary aimed at blocking the formation of functional AgdsxF did not affect male development or fertility, whereas females homozygous for the disrupted allele showed an intersex phenotype and complete sterility. A CRISPR–Cas9 gene drive construct targeting this same sequence spread rapidly in caged mosquitoes, reaching 100% prevalence within 7–11 generations while progressively reducing egg production to the point of total population collapse. Owing to functional constraint of the target sequence, no selection of alleles resistant to the gene drive occurred in these laboratory experiments. Cas9-resistant variants arose in each generation at the target site but did not block the spread of the drive

Donald Trump and the Very Very Big Brain

If you look at Mr. Pillsbury, the leading authority on China, he was on a good show, I won’t mention the name of the show, recently, and he was saying that China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump’s very, very large brain. He said Donald Trump, they don’t know what to do . . .