Republican lawmakers are sounding the alarm over a Chinese state-controlled shipping logistics platform they say could hand “sensitive U.S. government and military data” to the Chinese Communist Party.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Rep. Michelle Steel (R., Calif.) urged President Joe Biden in a Nov. 30 letter to “take action to halt the spread of LOGINK,” a CCP-controlled digital platform that Beijing is offering free of charge to ports, freight carriers, and foreign nations as a “one-stop shop” for their shipment tracking and data management needs. The platform—which China’s Ministry of Transport subsidizes—is already used in ports in South Korea and Japan, where the United States maintains a significant military presence. Because most U.S. military cargo is transported commercially, the CCP could use LOGINK in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere to “collect massive amounts of sensitive business and foreign government data,” including U.S. military shipping data, Cotton and Steel warned in their letter.

“The CCP could exploit their control over LOGINK to identify early trends in the movement of U.S. military supplies and equipment through commercial ports while denying other countries the same data on Chinese military assets,” the lawmakers wrote. “With the data that a global LOGINK system could provide, the CCP could effectively identify vital transportation nodes necessary to control the physical movement of goods. This would be a disaster for American interests.”

Cotton and Steel’s letter comes roughly two months after a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission linked LOGINK to a CCP effort to increase “global reliance on China” through “domestic infrastructure” and “transportation equipment.” That effort has already seen more than 20 global ports adopt the CCP’s platform, a troubling trend that “could subject U.S. military logistics to more surveillance by Chinese intelligence and military operators” and even “enable Chinese military planners to … disrupt U.S. military operations,” according to the commission. As a result, Cotton and Steel are pressing the Biden administration to detail its efforts to stop LOGINK’s spread, including through a potential U.S. alternative platform.

The Biden administration, which has until Jan. 11 to respond to the letter, told the Washington Free Beacon that it “takes all potential cyberthreats to the maritime transportation system and its related infrastructure extremely seriously” and “continually evaluates the tools and authorities available to address them,” but it declined to “preview potential responses to specific companies that may be under consideration.” More than 25 congressional Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and Reps. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), Maria Salazar (Fla.), and Guy Reschenthaler (Penn.), joined Cotton and Steel’s letter.

The administration has faced intense criticism from Republicans for tapping soft-on-China officials to serve in crucial roles. In September, for example, Biden appointed liberal political consultant John Podesta—who has praised China on climate change and called for direct Chinese investment in American infrastructure—to oversee $370 billion in climate spending. One month later, Biden hired Nina Hachigian to serve in a newly created State Department position aimed at countering China’s growing influence. Hachigian worked with two CCP front groups to foster ties between Washington and Beijing prior to taking the job. Biden’s representative on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Business Advisory Council, Dominic Ng, also has a long history of cozying up to the CCP, going as far as to criticize the United States for refusing to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which the Chinese government uses to subjugate foreign nations through direct infrastructure investment.

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Airline passengers face higher ticket prices as the industry moves towards its target of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, the head of a global trade association said on Tuesday.

Willie Walsh, Director General of the International Air Transport Association, which includes most of the world’s major airlines, called for swifter action in Europe to drive up scarce production of greener Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

Air fares have already jumped this year as a result of higher prices for conventional fossil-based jet fuel.

“You cannot expect an industry making on average $1 profit per customer to absorb the increases we’ve seen,” Walsh told reporters at an annual media briefing.

“Going forward as we see increases in carbon costs…there has to be an impact on ticket prices as the industry transitions to net zero. The airlines cannot absorb increased costs.”

Environmental groups argue that air higher travel costs will help to rein in emissions by curbing growth in traffic.

Walsh praised efforts by the United States to lift output of clean fuels, in apparent contrast with European objections that new U.S. incentives could create an uneven playing field.

“In the U.S. it is recognised that Sustainable Aviation Fuels are part of the answer and they are heavily focused on additional production,” Walsh said.

He dismissed as “nonsense” European Union moves to oblige airports to offer increasing supplies of SAF, which is not widely available.

“Europe’s answer to the problem penalises people,” he said.

In July, the European Parliament backed rules on aviation fuel that set binding targets for the replacement of kerosene with less polluting sources, while extending the definition of what a green fuel could be.

In the United States, the Biden administration has launched a government challenge to supply at least 3 billion gallons of SAF per year by 2030.

The airline sector is considered one of the most difficult to decarbonise as fuel for flights cannot be easily replaced with other kinds of power.

This year’s U.S. Inflation Reduction Act includes significant subsidies to the SAF industry in the form of tax credits, but European industry leaders including the head of planemaker Airbus (AIR.PA) have said the legislation is unfair.

Ukrainian long-range drone attacks on Russia – Google Search google.com/search?q=Ukrai…

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Researchers spotted a version of the open-source ransomware toolkit Cryptonite that doesn’t support decryption capabilities.

Fortinet researchers discovered a sample of malware generated with the publicly available open-source ransomware toolkit Cryptonite that never offers the decryption window, turning it as a wiper. The experts also reported an increase in ransomware intentionally turned into wiper malware, these malicious code are mainly employed in politically-motivated campaigns.

The ransomware toolkit was published on GitHub by a threat actor that goes under the name CYBERDEVILZ. Fortinet noticed that after one of its Ransomware Roundup series the source code and its forks have since been taken down.

The researchers believe that the toolkit isn’t a serious tool, it only implements a limited set of ransomware functionalities.

The encryption and decryption are not robust and the ransomware lack features like Windows Shadow Copy removal, File unlocking for a more thorough impact, Anti-analysis, and Defensive evasion (AMSI bypass, disabling event logging, etc.).

The sample analyzed by the expert masquerades as a software update, it shows a progress bar that represents the progress of encryption.

The sample is written in python and is bundled with pyinstaller into an executable, static analysis of the code revealed that the authors removed a portion of code used to enumerate the filesystem breaking the program’s functionality.

The dynamic analysis of the code shows program crashes when the ransomware tries to use the tkinter library in the warningScreen()function.

“The traceback shows that the ransomware fails when it tries to use the tkinter library in the warningScreen()function. At this point in this ransomware, the encryption process has already finished. The warningScreen() should show the ransom note and allow the victim to start the decryption.” reads the analysis published by Fortinet. “We can now see that the ransomware was not intentionally turned into a wiper. Instead, the lack of quality assurance led to a sample that did not work correctly. The problem with this flaw is that due to the design simplicity of the ransomware if the program crashes—or is even closed—there is no way to recover the encrypted files.”

The malware uses the Fernet module of the cryptography package to encrypt files.

“This sample demonstrates how a ransomware’s weak architecture and programming can quickly turn it into a wiper that does not allow data recovery. Although we often complain about the increasing sophistication of ransomware samples, we can also see that oversimplicity and a lack of quality assurance can also lead to significant problems.” concludes the report. “On the positive side, however, this simplicity, combined with a lack of self-protection features, allows every anti-virus program to easily spot this malware.”

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, cryptonite ransomware toolkit)

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Indonesia’s parliament passed long-awaited amendments to its colonial-era criminal code on Tuesday. Authorities have pushed for more than half a century to modify the country’s existing penal code, which Indonesia inherited from its former Dutch administration when it gained independence in 1949. But the revised code, which could take up to three years before it’s fully adopted, introduces several controversial statutes that many observers believe will threaten human rights and civil liberties in the third-largest democracy and largest Muslim-majority nation in the world.

A copy of the legislation seen by TIME includes amendments that penalize insulting the country’s president and vice president, spreading fake news, having sex outside marriage, and committing religious blasphemy. The rules will apply to locals and foreigners alike. Many legal experts and activists decry that the changes signal a democratic backslide in the Southeast Asian nation of 276 million.

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Indonesia’s parliament had planned on ratifying a new code in 2019, but some of the most controversial proposals sparked nationwide protests, and President Joko Widodo urged lawmakers to delay the process to consider public feedback.

Since then, legislators revived the bill in much the same form, though they watered down some of the draft code’s statutes that many had deemed particularly problematic. The amended penal code includes exceptions to its ban on abortion, which is punishable by up to four years in prison, in cases of rape or life-threatening medical issues so long as the procedure happens within 14 weeks of pregnancy. And although capital punishment will be maintained in Indonesia, despite calls for its abolition by human rights advocates, the new penal code calls for those sentenced to the death penalty to receive a 10-year probation, after which a judge may reduce a convict’s sentence to life or 20 years imprisonment for good behavior.

Demonstrators gathered outside the Indonesian parliament buildings in Jakarta on Monday to protest the criminal code’s passage.

According to Bloomberg, Indonesia’s Minister of Law and Human Rights, Yasonna H. Laoly, told parliament that the president is expected to sign off on the new penal code. But even after that happens, it won’t take effect right away, as the government must draft implementing regulations. Civic organizations, meanwhile, plan to take their fight against the code to Indonesia’s constitutional court.

Tunggal Pawestri, executive director of Yayasan Hivos, or the Humanist and Social Innovation Foundation, says she wished the revised code would move the country forward, not backwards, when it comes to democracy. “And I don’t think that we have it right now,” she tells TIME.

What does the revised criminal code include?

Indonesia has long attempted to pursue a penal code in line with its national values. But the changes effectively criminalize acts that don’t align with conservative and religious morality, like extramarital sex and cohabitation.

In the amended code, sex with someone who is not your spouse is punishable by up to a year in prison, while living together with someone who is not your spouse can lead to a six-month jail term. The code maintains that violators will only be prosecuted if their spouses—or in the case of unmarried individuals, their parents or children—lodge the complaints. Deputy Justice Minister Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej told CNN Indonesia that law enforcers will not carry out raids on matters of sex.

While homosexuality is not explicitly illegal in the country, advocates fear that the new criminal code may be used to further persecute LGBT people, particularly as same-sex marriage is not recognized.

Moreover, the revised code empowers local governments to enact their own legislation. Tunggal tells TIME the code recognizes “living laws”—customary laws at the local level that may include sharia law—which can discriminate against and prosecute marginalized groups like women, children, and LGBT people. The Indonesian province of Aceh, for example, which operates under sharia, bans unmarried men and women from dining together.

But morality policing is just one of the many issues of the revised code’s 624 articles.

Critics say certain amendments also threaten democratic values, including freedom of speech. For instance, attacking the dignity of the sitting president or vice president will be punishable by up to four years in prison if either files a complaint; insulting the government is punishable by up to three years; and spreading disinformation that causes public unrest is punishable by up to six years. Protests and demonstrations in public spaces will require a permit, and violators may either be fined or imprisoned for up to six months.

Spreading communist, Marxist, or Leninist ideologies, or philosophies deviating from the national ideology of pancasila—five largely secular guidelines for Indonesian life introduced by the country’s first president—will be punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And the country’s rules on blasphemy will be expanded to include apostasy (persuading a believer of one of Indonesia’s six recognized religions—Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—to become a nonbeliever), punishable by up to four years in prison.

How will this affect Indonesia?

Critics of the new criminal code are concerned that it will exacerbate corruption in the country.

The Indonesian police has some 412,000 national police officers, and its local governments also have municipal police to enforce local laws. But with Indonesia’s large population, Bivitri Susanti, a lecturer at Indonesia Jentera School of Law in Jakarta, expects shortcomings in enforcement, though she says that could be addressed within the three-year provisional period before the code fully takes effect.

A shortage of police officers combined with the police’s longstanding reputation for being corrupt, Bivitri says, could pave the way for discriminatory enforcement of the new criminal code.

“What will happen in the future is that those kinds of articles will only be applied to people who don’t have access and who don’t have enough money to actually bribe the police,” Bivitri says. “So politicians and rich people, for example, they can easily go around the regulations.”

“The danger of oppressive laws is not that they’ll be broadly applied, it’s that they provide avenue for selective enforcement,” said Andreas Harsono, a senior Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, according to the Associated Press. “These laws let police extort bribes, let officials jail political foes, for instance, with the blasphemy law,” Harsono said.

The revised penal code also threatens the Southeast Asian country’s international reputation. “Criminalizing the personal decisions of individuals would loom large within the decision matrix of many companies determining whether to invest in Indonesia,” U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Sung Kim said in a speech in Jakarta on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “The outcome could well result in less foreign investment, tourism, and travel.”

How does this compare to morality enforcement elsewhere?

Indonesia is not the only country notorious for strict morality laws. Many other Muslim-majority countries—including Afghanistan under the Taliban, Malaysia, Iran, Brunei, and Nigeria—also regulate aspects of public and private life in accordance with religious values. Of course, such rules are not exclusive to Muslim countries: some U.S. states even have adultery laws on the books, though they are rarely enforced. Dozens of countries, according to Human Dignity Trust, criminalize sexual activity between members of the same sex.

In Indonesia, many local governments already impose customary laws that trample on human rights, Bivitris, the law lecturer, says. The country has long grappled with the tension between its secular constitution and its largely religious population, and support for the nationwide criminal code amendments mainly came from conservative groups, she says.

The government, in deliberating the new code’s passage, claims it tried to accommodate a range of perspectives. The Ministry of Law and Human Rights held “socialization” activities with the public over the past two years to facilitate dialogue over the amendments. However, some opposition groups said the discussions were one-sided.

“It’s not the task of the government to be the umpire or to be the arbiter of different opinions in the society,” Bivitri says. “The government is to hold on to the rule of law based on human rights.”

Fall and winter are traditionally boom times for respiratory viruses—a point well proven by this year’s confluence of influenza, RSV, and COVID-19. Almost 9 million people nationwide have been sickened by the flu already this season, RSV is surging among children, and COVID-19 continues to infect tens of thousands of people in the U.S. each day.

But why does cold weather typically translate to cold and flu season? Experts often point to changes in human behavior—namely that chilly temperatures force people inside, where it’s easier for germs to spread. But a new study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology suggests another explanation can be found within our noses.

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As the body’s gateway to the outside world, the human nose is equipped with defenses meant to stop invaders, such as viruses and bacteria, in their tracks. In 2018, researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University, Massachusetts Eye and Ear (a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School), and several other organizations described one of those shields in a paper also published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. When the nose detects bacteria, they found, it releases a swarm of tiny fluid-filled sacs meant to attack and neutralize it.

“When you kick a hornet’s nest, the hornets swarm out and try to kill whatever the attacker is before it can attack the nest,” says co-author Dr. Benjamin Bleier, director of otolaryngology translational research at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “That’s what the body’s doing.”

In the new study, Bleier and his collaborators show that the nose deploys similar defenses against common respiratory viruses, including two rhinoviruses (frequent causes of the common cold) and a coronavirus (though not the one that causes COVID-19). They also set out to answer another question: does cold weather dampen the effectiveness of the nose’s natural immune response?

Previous research suggests common respiratory viruses thrive at lower temperatures. In 2015, a research team from Yale University used mice to demonstrate that rhinoviruses are better at replicating in colder temperatures because antiviral immune responses aren’t as strong under these conditions. Research from the National Institutes of Health has also shown that influenza viruses are better at spreading in chilly climates.

The new paper builds on that earlier work by laying out a “true, quantitative, biologic explanation…of why the body is more susceptible to viral infections when being exposed to cold,” Bleier says.

For the study, researchers measured the nasal temperatures of healthy human volunteers at about 74°F versus approximately 40°F. They found that the nasal cavity’s temperature dropped by about 9°F in the colder condition. Next, in the laboratory, they exposed nasal cell samples to a similar reduction in temperature, to mimic what actually happens within the nose in a cold climate. They found that the immune response was significantly blunted at the lower temperature.

In addition to helping explain long-observed trends about respiratory viruses spiking during cold months, the finding could eventually lead to new therapeutics, says study co-author Mansoor Amiji, chairman of the department of pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern. If researchers can find a way to boost the nose’s innate immune response, even under cold temperatures, they could feasibly stop more viral illnesses before they take root.

“You only need to trigger that response locally to protect the rest of the body,” Bleier says. “It just speaks to how important the nasal cavity is.”