Home

On:

Researchers studying potential security issues surrounding open-source computer programs used to analyze DNA have found that most common sequencing software is the subject of poor security practices, leaving such systems open to cyberattacks and exploits. While the researchers haven’t found any evidence of attacks made against DNA synthesizing, sequencing and processing services, they did find that it is possible to encode a computer virus into synthetic DNA that could conceivably infect the computer that is analyzing this altered genetic code.
read more

On:

Scientists are fond of trying to break codes–and sometimes they succeed. One manuscript they’ve been working on seems straight out of fiction: a strange handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages, hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character "Copiale Cipher" has finally been broken.
read more

On:

It’s a story right out of a crime novel: Ricky McCormick, age 41, was found dead in a field in St. Louis in June, 1999 and his killer has never been caught. But McCormick left a CLUE about his murder–except no one can read it because it’s in code! Two mysterious pieces of paper were found in his pants pocket.
read more