Russia-aligned hackers are targeting Signal users with device-linking QR codes

Signal, as an encrypted messaging app and protocol, remains relatively secure. But Signal's growing popularity as a tool to circumvent surveillance has led agents affiliated with Russia to try to manipulate the app's users into surreptitiously linking their devices, according to Google's Threat Intelligence Group.

While Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine is likely driving the country's desire to work around Signal's encryption, "We anticipate the tactics and methods used to target Signal will grow in prevalence in the near-term and proliferate to additional threat actors and regions outside the Ukrainian theater of war," writes Dan Black at Google's Threat Intelligence blog.

There was no mention of a Signal vulnerability in the report. Nearly all secure platforms can be overcome by some form of social engineering. Microsoft 365 accounts were recently revealed to be the target of "device code flow" OAuth phishing by Russia-related threat actors. Google notes that the latest versions of Signal include features designed to protect against these phishing campaigns.

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Saving Public Data Takes More Than Simple Snapshots

Shortly after the Trump administration took office in the United States in late January, more than 8,000 pages across several government websites and databases were taken down, the New York Times found. Though many of these have now been restored, thousands of pages were purged of references to gender and diversity initiatives, for example, and others including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) website remain down.

By 11 February, a federal judge ruled that the government agencies must restore public access to pages and datasets maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While many scientists fled to online archives in a panic, ironically, the Justice Department had argued that the physicians who brought the case were not harmed because the removed information was available on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In response, a federal judge wrote, “The Court is not persuaded,” noting that a user must know the original URL of an archived page in order to view it.

The administration’s legal argument “was a bit of an interesting accolade,” says Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, who believes the judge’s ruling was “apropos.” Over the past few weeks, the Internet Archive and other archival sites have received attention for preserving government databases and websites. But these projects have been ongoing for years. The Internet Archive, for example, was founded as a nonprofit dedicated to providing universal access to knowledge nearly 30 years ago, and it now records more than a billion URLs every day, says Graham.

Since 2008, Internet Archive has also hosted an accessible copy of the End of Term Web Archive, a collaboration that documents changes to federal government sites before and after administration changes. In the most recent collection, it has already archived more than 500 terabytes of material.

Complementary Crawls

The Internet Archive’s strength is scale, Graham says. “We can often [preserve] things quickly, at scale. But we don’t have deep experience in analysis.” Meanwhile, groups like the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative and the Association of Health Care Journalists provide help for activists and academics identifying and documenting changes.

The Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School has also joined the efforts with its archive of data.gov, a 16 TB collection that includes more than 311,000 public datasets and is being updated daily with new data. The project began in late 2024, when the library realized that data sets are often missed in other web crawls, says Jack Cushman, a software engineer and director of the Library Innovation Lab.

“You can miss anything where you have to interact with JavaScript or with a button or with a form.” —Jack Cushman, Library Innovation Lab

A typical crawl has no trouble capturing basic HTML, PDF, or CSV files. But archiving interactive web services that are driven by databases poses a challenge. It would be impossible to archive a site like Amazon, for example, says Graham.

The datasets the Library Innovation Lab (LIL) is working to archive are similarly tricky to capture. “If you’re doing a web crawl and just clicking from link to link, as the End of Term archive does, you can miss anything where you have to interact with JavaScript or with a button or with a form, where you have to ask for permission and then register or download something,” explains Cushman.

“We wanted to do something that was complementary to existing web crawls, and the way we did that was to go into APIs,” he says. By going into the API’s, which bypass web pages to access data directly, the LIL’s program could fetch a complete catalog of the data sets—whether CSV, Excel, XML, or other file types—and pull the associated URLs to create an archive. In the case of data.gov, Cushman and his colleagues wrote a script to send the right 300 queries that would fetch 1,000 items per query, then go through the 300,000 total items to gather the data. “What we’re looking for is areas where some automation will unlock a lot of new data that wouldn’t otherwise be unlocked,” says Cushman.

The other important factor for the LIL archive was to make sure the data was in a usable format. “You might get something in a web crawl where [the data] is there across 100,000 web pages, but it’s very hard to get it back out into a spreadsheet or something that you can analyze,” Cushman says. Making it usable, both in the data format and user interface, helps create a sustainable archive.

Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe

The key to preserving the internet’s data is a principle that goes by the acronym LOCKSS: Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.

When the Internet Archive suffered a cyberattack last October, the Archive took down the site for a three-and-a-half week period to audit the entire site and implement security upgrades. “Libraries have traditionally always been under attack, so this is no different,” Graham says. As part of its defense, the Archive now has several copies of the materials in disparate physical locations, both inside and outside the U.S.

“The US government is the world’s largest publisher,” Graham notes. It publishes material on a wide range of topics, and “much of it is beneficial to people, not only in this country, but throughout the world, whether that is about energy or health or agriculture or security.” And the fact that many individuals and organizations are contributing to preservation of the digital world is actually a good thing.

“The goal is for those copies to be diverse across every metric that you can think of. They should be on different kinds of media. They should be controlled by different people, with different funding sources, in different formats,” says Cushman. “Every form of similarity between your backups creates a risk of loss.” The data.gov archive has its primary copy stored through a cloud service with others as backup. The archive also includes open source software to make it easy to replicate.

In addition to maintaining copies, Cushman says it’s important to include cryptographic signatures and timestamps. Each time an archive is created, it’s signed with cryptographic proof of the creator’s email address and time, which can help verify the validity of an archive.

An Ongoing Challenge

Since President Trump took office, a lot of material has been removed from US federal websites—quantifiably more than previous new administrations, says Graham. On a global scale, however, this isn’t unprecedented, he adds.

In the U.S., official government websites have been changed with each new administration since Bill Clinton’s, notes Jason Scott, a “free range archivist” at the Internet Archive and co-founder of digital preservation site Archive Team. “This one’s more chaotic,” Scott says. But “the web is a very high entropy entity ... Google is an archive like a supermarket is a food museum.”

The job of digital archivists is a difficult one, especially with a backlog of sites that have existed across the evolution of internet standards. But these efforts are not new. “The ramping up will only be in terms of disk space and bandwidth resources, not the process that has been ongoing,” says Scott.

For Cushman, working on this project has underscored the value of public data. “The government data that we have is like a GPS signal,” he says. “It doesn’t tell us where to go, but it tells us what’s around us, so that we can make decisions. Engaging with it for the first time this way has really helped me appreciate what a treasure we have.”

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Microsoft warns that the powerful XCSSET macOS malware is back with new tricks

Microsoft said it has detected a new variant of XCSSET, a powerful macOS malware family that has targeted developers and users since at least 2020.

The variant, which Microsoft reported Monday, marked the first publicly known update to the malware since 2022. The malware first came to light in 2020, when security firm Trend Micro said it had targeted app developers after spreading through a publicly available project the attacker wrote for Xcode, a developer tool Apple makes freely available. The malware gained immediate attention because it exploited what, at the time, were two zero-day vulnerabilities, a testament to the resourcefulness of the entity behind the attacks.

In 2021, XCSSET surfaced again, first when it was used to backdoor developers’ devices and a few months later when researchers found it exploiting what at the time was a new zero-day.

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A Rover Race on Mojave Desert Sands

With NASA working on sending humans to Mars starting in the 2030s, colonizing the Red Planet seems more achievable than ever. The space agency is already leading yearlong simulated missions to better understand how living on Mars could affect humans.

Because of the planet’s thin atmosphere, high radiation levels, and abrasive dust, people would need to live in specialized dwellings and use robots to perform outdoor tasks.

With hopes of inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists to develop space robots, IEEE held its first Robopalooza, a telepresence competition with robotic demonstrations, in November in Lucerne Valley, Calif. The competition is expected to become an annual event.

The contest and demonstrations were held in conjunction with the IEEE Conference on Telepresence at Caltech. The events were organized by IEEE Telepresence, an IEEE Future Directions initiative that aims to advance telepresence technology to help redefine how people live and work.

Seven teams from universities and robotics companies worldwide remotely operated a Helelani rover through an obstacle course inspired by the game Capture the Flag. The 318-kilogram vehicle was provided by the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES), an aerospace research center at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. The team that took the least time to retrieve the flag—located on a small hill in the middle of the 400-meter-long course—received US $5,000.

Companies and university labs developing space robots demonstrated some of their creations to the more than 300 conference attendees including local preuniversity students.

This year’s conference and competition are scheduled to be held in Leiden, Netherlands, from 8 to 10 September.

Why humans need robots on Mars

Science fiction writers have long explored the idea of people living on another planet, before astronauts even landed on the moon. It’s still a staple of popular series including the Dune, Red Rising, and Star Wars franchises, whose main characters don’t just reside in a galaxy far, far away. Paul Atreides, Darrow O’Lykos, and Luke Skywalker grew up or live on a desert planet much like Mars.

Settling the Red Planet is not likely to be easy. Before sending people there, robots would need to build housing. The planet’s atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide. The radiation there would kill human inhabitants in a few months if they weren’t adequately shielded from it. Also, according to NASA, Mars is covered in fine dust particles; breathing in the sharp-edged fragments could damage lungs.

Once people inhabit the robot-built dwellings, they would need to use robots to complete outdoor tasks such as geological research, building maintenance, and water mining.

Spacecraft aren’t immune to Mars’s dangers, either. The thin atmosphere makes it difficult for rovers to land, as there is minimal air resistance to slow down their descent. The planet’s radiation levels, up to 50 times higher than on Earth, gradually degrade a rover’s erosion-resistant coating, electronic systems, and other components. The abrasive dust also can damage spacecraft.

Today’s rovers are slow-moving, averaging a ground speed of about 150 meters per hour on a flat surface, in part because of the 20- to 40-minute delay in communications between Earth and Mars, says Robert Mueller, who organized the telepresence competition. And rovers are expensive: NASA’s latest, Perseverance, cost around $1.7 billion to design and build.

Racing robots in the desert

When choosing a location for the Robopalooza, Mueller found that California’s Mojave Desert, with its hills and soft sand, closely resembled Mars’s topography. Mueller, an IEEE member, is a senior technologist and principal investigator at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, near Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The competing teams were located in Australia, Chile, and the United States.

A camera mounted on the Helelani rover live-streamed its view to the participants’ computers so they could remotely maneuver the vehicle. The route ended at the top of Peterman Hill. The teams tried to navigate the rover around 14 traffic cones placed randomly along the course. If the rover touched a cone, 10 seconds were added to the team’s final time. If a team wasn’t able to maneuver the rover around a cone, 20 seconds were added.

Seven teams—from North Dakota University; SK Godelius; the University of Adelaide, in Australia; the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; Virginia State University; and Western Australia Remote Operations (WARO32)—competed remotely. The California State Polytechnic University, Ponoma, team competed on-site from a trailer.

With a finishing time of 20 minutes and 10 seconds—and no penalties—WARO32 won the competition.

“The winning team operated the rover from Perth, Australia, which was 14,800 kilometers from the competition site. They were the team that was farthest away from the vehicle,” Mueller says. “This showcases that telepresence is achievable across Earth and that there is enormous potential for a variety of tasks to be performed using telepresence, such as telemedicine, remote machinery operation, and business and corporate communication.”

Hector, a lunar lander, wears toddler-size Crocs to give it traction and balance.

Preuniversity students try out space robots

At the IEEE robotic demonstrations, representatives from robotics companies including Honeybee, Cislune, and Neurospace showed off some of their creations. They included a robot that extracts water from rocky soil, a lunar soil excavator, and a cargo vehicle that can adapt to different terrains.

Mueller invited nearby teachers to bring their students to the IEEE event. More than 300 elementary, middle, and high school students attended.

They had the opportunity to see top robotics companies demonstrate their machines and to play with Hector, a bipedal lunar lander created by two doctoral students from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles.

“Many students and other attendees were inspired by the potential of robotics and telepresence as they watched the robot racing in the Mojave Desert,” Mueller says. “The IEEE Telepresence Initiative is planning to make this competition an annual event, which will take place at remote locations across the world that have extreme conditions, mimicking extraterrestrial planetary surfaces.”

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China Rescues Stranded Lunar Satellites

China has managed to deliver a pair of satellites into lunar orbit despite the spacecraft initially being stranded in low Earth orbit following a rocket failure, using a mix of complex calculations, precise engine burns, and astrodynamic ingenuity.

China launched the DRO-A and B satellites on 13 March last year on a Long March 2C rocket, aiming to send the pair into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. However, the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage—intended to fire the spacecraft into a transfer orbit to the moon—failed, leaving the pair marooned in low Earth orbit.

Little is known for certain about the satellites. They must be small, given the limited payload capabilities of the rocket used for the launch, and are thought to be for testing technology and the uses of the unusual retrograde orbit. (DRO orbits could be handy for lunar communications and observation.) Critically, the spacecraft’s small size means they have little propellant, making reaching lunar orbit from low Earth orbit unassisted a very tall order. However, Microsat, the institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) behind the mission, got to work on a rescue, despite the daunting distance.

“Having to replan that in a hurry must be a nightmare, so it’s a very impressive achievement.” —Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian

What followed was a 167-day-long effort that first got the spacecraft out to well beyond lunar distance and then successfully inserted the satellites into their intended orbit. The operation included five orbital maneuvers, five further trajectory corrections to fine-tune the satellites course, and three gravity assists from the Earth and moon.

The first steps were small engine burns at perigee—the spacecraft’s closest orbital approach to Earth—which gradually raised the apogee—the farthest point of the orbit from Earth. Once the apogee was high enough, a larger burn put the spacecraft on an atypical course for the moon.

From the Earth to the Moon

Normally, spacecraft going to the moon follow the simplest trajectory, a so-called Hohmann transfer that burns a lot of propellant to get moving and then uses another big burn to drop into orbit once the spacecraft arrives at its destination after three to four days. Instead, the Chinese took advantage of a chaotic dynamical region around the Earth-moon system to save propellant. The Japanese Hiten probe had been rescued using a similar approach in 1990, but it was sent into a conventional lunar orbit.The calculations to reach DRO—a high-altitude, long-term stable orbit moving in a retrograde direction relative to the moon—would have been arduous.

“A small error will make you miss your target by a long way.” —Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian

“The astrodynamics of getting to the Moon is already much more complicated than just Earth orbit missions,” says Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer and space activity tracker and analyst. “Involving so-called ‘weak capture’ and distant retrograde orbits is far more complicated still, and having to replan that in a hurry must be a nightmare, so it’s a very impressive achievement.”

Weak capture refers to a celestial body gravitationally capturing a spacecraft without the need for a significant propulsive maneuver. This technique, crucial for a fuel-efficient lunar orbit insertion, demands precise timing and fine trajectory adjustments, as McDowell explains.

“The way to think of these ‘modern’ and fancy orbit strategies is that you trade time for fuel. It takes much longer but you use less fuel. Once you get out to the apogee of the transfer trajectory—they don’t say how far out that was but I am guessing over a million kilometers—you can change your final destination a lot with just a small puff of the rockets. But by the same token, a small error will make you miss your target by a long way.”

Slides from an apparent Microsat presentation emerged on social media, illustrating the circuitous path taken to deliver the spacecraft to lunar orbit. The institute, however, did not respond to a request for comment on the mission.

DRO-A and B separated from each other after successfully entering their intended distant retrograde orbit. The pair have, according to U.S. Space Force space domain awareness, orbits with an apogee of around 580,000 kilometers relative to the Earth and a perigee of around 290,000 km, while the moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 385,000 km, indicating a very high orbit above the moon.

There, the spacecraft are testing out the attributes of the unique orbit and testing technologies, including communications with another satellite, DRO-L, which was launched a month before DRO-A and B into low Earth orbit. Though not a major part of China’s lunar plans, the country is planning to establish lunar navigation and communications infrastructure to support lunar exploration, and the satellites could inform these plans.

DRO-A, at least, also carries a science payload in the form of an all-sky monitor to detect gamma-ray bursts, particularly those associated with gravitational wave events, such as colliding black holes, neutron star collisions, and supernovae. The instrumentation is based on China’s earlier GECAM low Earth orbit gamma-ray-detecting mission, but with an unobstructed field of view in deep space and less interference.

The rescue then is a boost for China’s lunar plans and space science objectives, and demonstrates Chinese prowess in astrodynamics. McDowell notes the closest approximation to this rescue is the Asiasat 3 mission, renamed HGS-1, where the satellite bound for geostationary (GEO) orbit was stuck in an elliptical transfer orbit in 1997. The satellite’s apogee was raised to make a pair of lunar flybys to eventually deliver it to GEO with fuel remaining to operate for four years.

“[This] definitely shows that China is now on a par with the U.S. in its ability to manage complex astrodynamics,” McDowell says.

China also pulled off a complex lunar far side sample return mission last year, requiring five separate spacecraft, and next year plans a landing at the lunar south pole to seek out volatiles including water. The successful salvaging of the DRO-A and B mission reinforces China’s growing expertise in deep space navigation and complex orbital rescues. With plans to establish a permanent moon base in the 2030s, such capabilities will be crucial for maintaining and supporting long-term Moon operations.

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Willie Hobbs Moore: STEM Trailblazer

At a time in American history when even the most intelligent Black women were expected to become, at most, teachers or nurses, Willie Hobbs Moore broke with societal expectations to become a noted physicist and engineer.

Moore probably is best known for being the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in science (physics) in the United States, in 1972. She also is renowned for being an unwavering advocate for getting more Black people into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Her achievements have inspired generations of Black students, and women especially, to believe that they could pursue a STEM career.

Moore, who died in her Ann Arbor, Mich., home on 14 March 1994, two months shy of her 60th birthday, is the subject of the new book Willie Hobbs Moore—You’ve Got to Be Excellent! The biography, published by IEEE-USA, is the seventh in the organization’s Famous Women Engineers in History series.

Moore attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and, in 1972, her barrier-breaking doctorate in physics. In 2013, the University of Michigan Women in Science and Engineering unit created the Willie Hobbs Moore Awards to honor students, staff, and faculty members who “demonstrate excellence promoting equity” in STEM fields. The university held a symposium in 2022 to honor Moore’s work and celebrate the 50th anniversary of her achievement.

Physicist Donnell Walton, former director of the Corning West Technology Center in Silicon Valley and a National Society of Black Physicists board member, praised Moore, saying she indicated that what’s possible is not limited to what’s expected. Walton befriended Moore while he was pursuing his doctorate in applied physics at the university, he says, adding that he admired the strength and perseverance it took for her to thrive in academic and professional arenas where she was the only Black woman.

Despite ingrained social norms that tended to push women and minorities into lower-status occupations, Moore refused to be dissuaded from her career. She conducted physics research at the University of Michigan and held several positions in industry before joining Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., in 1977. She became a U.S. expert in Japanese quality systems and engineering design, improving Ford’s production processes. She rose through the ranks at the automaker and served as an executive who oversaw the warranty department within the company’s automobile assembly operation.

An early trailblazer

Moore was born in 1934 in Atlantic City, N.J. According to a Physics Today article that delved into her background, her father was a plumber and her mother worked part time as a hotel chambermaid.

An A student throughout high school, Moore displayed a talent for science and mathematics. She became the first person in her family to earn a college degree.

She began her studies at the Michigan engineering college in 1954—the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against legally mandated segregation in public schools.

Moore was the only Black female undergraduate in the electrical engineering program. Her academic success makes it clear that being one of one was not an impediment. But race was occasionally an issue. In that same 2022 Physics Today article, Ronald E. Mickens, a physics professor at Clark Atlanta University, told a story about an incident from Moore’s undergraduate days that illustrates the point. One day she encountered the chairman of another engineering college department, and completely unprompted, he told her, “You don’t belong here. Even if you manage to finish, there is no place for you in the professional world you seek.”

“There will always be prejudiced people; you’ve got to be prepared to survive in spite of their attitudes.” —Willie Hobbs Moore

But she persevered, maintaining her standard of excellence in her academic pursuits. She earned a bachelor’s degree in EE in 1958, followed by an EE master’s degree in 1961. She was the first Black woman to earn those degrees at Michigan.

She worked as an engineer at several companies before returning to the university in 1966 to begin working toward a doctorate. She conducted her graduate research under the direction of Samuel Krimm, a noted infrared spectroscopist. Krimm’s work focused on analyzing materials using infrared so he could study their molecular structures. Moore’s dissertation was a theoretical analysis of secondary chlorides for polyvinyl chloride polymers. PVC, a type of plastic, is widely used in construction, health care, and packaging. Moore’s work led to the development of additives that gave PVC pipes greater thermal and mechanical stability and improved their durability.

Moore paid for her doctoral studies by working part time at the university, KMS Industries, and Datamax Corp., all in Ann Arbor. Joining KMS as a systems analyst, she supported the optics design staff and established computer requirements for the optics division. She left KMS in 1968 to become a senior analyst at Datamax. In that role, she headed the analytics group, which evaluated the company’s products.

After earning her Ph.D. in 1972, for the next five years she was a postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer with the university’s Macromolecular Research Center.

She authored more than a dozen papers on protein spectroscopy—the science of analyzing proteins’ structure, composition, and activity by measuring how they interact with electromagnetic radiation. Her work appeared in several prestigious publications including the Journal of Applied Physics, The Journal of Chemical Physics, and the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.

Despite a promising career in academia, Moore left to work in industry.

Ford’s quality control queen

Moore joined Ford in 1977 as an assembly engineer. In an interview with The Ann Arbor News, she recalled contending with racial hostility and overt accusations that she was underqualified and had been hired only to fill a quota that was part of the company’s affirmative action program.

She demonstrated her value to the organization and became an expert in Japanese methods of quality engineering and manufacturing, particularly those invented by Genichi Taguchi, a renowned engineer and statistician.

The Taguchi method emphasized continuous improvement, waste reduction, and employee involvement in projects. Moore pushed Ford to use the approach, which led to higher-quality products and better efficiency. The changes proved critical to boosting the company’s competitiveness against Japanese automakers, which had begun to dominate the automobile market in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Eventually, Moore rose to the company’s executive ranks, overseeing the warranty department of Ford’s assembly operation.

In 1985 Moore co-wrote the book Quality Engineering Products and Process Design Optimization with Yuin Wu, vice president of Taguchi Methods Training at ASI Consulting Group in Bingham Farms, Mich. ASI helps businesses develop strategies for improving productivity, engineering, and product quality. In their book, Moore and Wu wrote, “Philosophically, the Taguchi approach is technology rather than theory. It is inductive rather than deductive. It is an engineering tool. The Taguchi approach is concerned with productivity enhancement and cost-effectiveness.”

Encouraging more Blacks to study STEM

Moore was active in STEM education for minorities, as explored in an article about her published by the American Physical Society. She brought her skills and experience to volunteer activities, intending to produce more STEM professionals who looked like her. She was involved in community science and math programs in Ann Arbor, sponsored by The Links, a service organization for Black women. She also was active with Delta Sigma Theta, a historically Black, service-oriented sorority. She volunteered with the Saturday Academy, a community mentoring program that focuses on developing college-bound students’ life skills. Volunteers also provide subject matter instruction.

She advised minority engineering students: “There will always be prejudiced people; you’ve got to be prepared to survive in spite of their attitudes.” Black students she encountered recall her oft-repeated mantra: “You’ve got to be excellent!”

In a posthumous tribute essay about Moore, Walton recalled befriending her at the Saturday Academy while tutoring middle and high school students in science and mathematics.

“Don Coleman, the former associate provost at Howard University and a good friend of mine,” Walton wrote, “noted that Dr. Hobbs Moore had tutored him when he was an engineering student at the University of Michigan. [Coleman] recalled that she taught the fundamentals and always made him feel as though she was merely reminding him of what he already knew rather than teaching him unfamiliar things.”

Walton recalled how dedicated Moore was to ensuring Black students were prepared to follow in her footsteps. He said she was a mainstay at the Saturday Academy until her 24-year battle with cancer made it impossible for her to continue.

She was posthumously honored with the Bouchet Award at the National Conference of Black Physics Students in 1995. Edward A. Bouchet was the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. in a science (physics) in the United States.

Walton, who said he admired Moore for her determination to light the way for succeeding generations, says the programs that helped him as a young student are no longer being pursued with the fervor they once were.

“Particularly right now,” he told the American Institute of Physics in 2024, “we’re seeing a retrenchment, a backlash against programs and initiatives that deal with the historical underrepresentation of women and other people who we know have a history in the United States of being excluded. And if we don’t have interventions in place, there’s nothing to say that it won’t continue.” In the interview, Walton said he is concerned that instead of there being more STEM professionals like Moore, there might be fewer.

A lasting legacy

Moore’s life is a testament to perseverance, excellence, and the power of mentorship. Her achievements prove that it’s possible to overcome the inertia of low societal expectations and improve the world.

Willie Hobbs Moore—You’ve Got to Be Excellent! Biography is available for free to members. The non-member price is US $2.99

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What is device code phishing, and why are Russian spies so successful at it?

Researchers have uncovered a sustained and ongoing campaign by Russian spies that uses a clever phishing technique to hijack Microsoft 365 accounts belonging to a wide range of targets, researchers warned.

The technique is known as device code phishing. It exploits “device code flow,” a form of authentication formalized in the industry-wide OAuth standard. Authentication through device code flow is designed for logging printers, smart TVs, and similar devices into accounts. These devices typically don’t support browsers, making it difficult to sign in using more standard forms of authentication, such as entering user names, passwords, and two-factor mechanisms.

Rather than authenticating the user directly, the input-constrained device displays an alphabetic or alphanumeric device code along with a link associated with the user account. The user opens the link on a computer or other device that’s easier to sign in with and enters the code. The remote server then sends a token to the input-constrained device that logs it into the account.

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