Although often glossed over, the human liver is a pretty amazing organ. Not just because it’s pretty much the sole thing that prevents our food from killing us, but also because it’s the only organ in our body that is capable of significant regeneration. This is a major boon in medicine, as you can remove most of a person’s liver and it’ll happily regrow back to its original volume. Obviously this is very convenient in the case of disease or when performing a liver transplant.

Despite tissue regeneration being very common among animals, most mammalian species have only limited regenerative ability. This means that while some species can easily regrow entire limbs and organs including eyes as well as parts of their brain, us humans and our primate cousins are lucky if we can even count on our liver to do that thing, while limbs and eyes are lost forever.

This raises many questions, including whether the deactivation of regenerative capabilities is just an evolutionary glitch, and how easily we might be able to turn it back on.

Regenerating Vs Repair

Even in the absence of a regenerative ability, animals can heal injuries, which generally means the growth of fibrous tissue called scar tissue. This can be observed very clearly on our skin, where certain old injuries tend to remain clearly visible as the scar tissue replaces skin tissue. While made of the same collagen protein as skin tissue, the fiber organization is different and serves no real purpose beyond sealing up a lesion. Scar tissue can form elsewhere in the body too, where it can impede function, as in the heart and lungs.

Both regeneration and repair are a form of healing in an organism, but only the former restores the original functionality, whereas the latter is the biological equivalent of slapping on a duct tape patch and calling it good. This ‘repair’ outcome is effectively an incomplete regeneration process, where instead of the affected site creating the conditions for normal growth – leading to a good-as-new result – you only get the basic scaffolding while certain biochemical pathways are never or insufficiently activated.
Phases of wound healing. (Credit: Mikael Häggström, Wikimedia)
Although it’s often said that the human liver is the sole organ capable of regeneration in our species, it could be argued that our blood vessels are a much better example of regeneration. Within minutes after receiving a cut or bad scrape, any damaged blood vessels are plugged and macrophages along with other specialized cells begin to move into the area as the inflammatory phase begins.

At the end of this phase, angiogenesis commences, which involves existing blood vessels growing new blood vessels into the affected area. In a developing embryo, this is the stage that follows the earliest development of the initial blood vessels through vasculogenesis. In this regard, blood vessels can be said to regenerate themselves in the case of injury. They can also expand into tissues where e.g. hypoxia conditions are present, which triggers the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) signaling path.

In the case of wound healing this signal path is stimulated due to the hypoxia condition that exists at the injury site. Although the HIF-related HIF-1α subunit is constantly expressed, oxygen-dependent prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) normally degrade it and thus downregulating the further responses down this chain.

Another aspect here is the re-epithelization, whereby surrounding skin cells move towards the wound, multiplying until the signals that induce this growth are downregulated below a critical threshold. Based on research the same HIF pathway is implicated here. For example, in a 2015 study in Science Translational Medicine Yong Zhang et al. reported that forced upregulation of HIF-1α was able to induce full regeneration of a hole punched in the ears of mice who normally just show scarring.

This indicates that boosting the HIF signaling pathway might be a viable way to prevent scarring and induce full regeneration of certain types of wounds to the skin.

Blastema Limbo

Two Ambystoma mexicanum axolotl at the Vancouver Aquarium. (Credit: ZeWrestler, Wikimedia)
The HIF signaling pathway is an example of a basic regeneration pathway involving a single organ (i.e. the skin). Things get more complicated when there’s the removal of something to the extent of a limb. Among mammals regenerating ability is limited, with some species like rabbits still possessing the ability to regenerate holes in their ears while other species, including humans, are not creating the requisite blastema of undifferentiated cells after an amputation.

The axolotl is one of the most studied species when it comes to tissue regeneration. Similar to other salamanders they possess a remarkable ability to regenerate many parts of their body, with the axolotl capable of regenerating their limbs, gills, eyes and parts of their brain. Although annelids (segmented worms) and echinoderms like starfish are capable of even more extreme forms of regeneration, axolotls are significantly more akin to us mammals than either of those.

Incidentally, similar research in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) has led us to the highly conserved Hippo signaling pathway. This particular signaling path is essential in determining how big an organ is supposed to be, such as when a human liver is chopped up in vivo and has to regrow back to its original size.

New Limb Cap

When an axolotl suffers severe injury like the loss of a limb or a gill, the surface where the amputation occurred gets covered up by epidermal cells, forming the wound epithelium (WE). This is the point where for human and other mammals the process pretty much ends with a stump covered up by skin. In the case of the axolotl, however, this WE keeps gathering epidermal cells, forming the apical epithelial cap (AEC).

Inside this AEC the tissues then undergo dedifferentiation into a blastema – led by signals from macrophages – effectively resetting the tissues here to a much earlier, embryonic state of development. Under the influence of Hox genes which regulate the body’s layout, the AEC subsequently grows as it would have done previously with the very young axolotl until the entire limb, gill, eye, etc. has been regrown.
Hox protein classification across model organisms by CLANS analysis, (Credit: Hueber et al., 2010)
The trick is thus to take these identified signaling pathways, establish in how far they have been preserved in other animals – like us primates – and whether we can easily re-enable them in some way, whether permanently or temporarily. After all, it worked once when we were still embryos, ergo by resetting the cellular clock on part of our bodies it would simply run through the same biochemical steps again.

Still A Lumpy Road Ahead

Of course, this involves developmental biology, biochemistry and genetic research, meaning that clear answers are rarely found and require immense amounts of research and study to unravel how all of these signaling pathways work, while maybe finding a few more ones along the way. The upshot of course is that the field of regenerative medicine can have massive implications for human health, ranging from the ability to treat many (genetic) disorders related to faulty signaling pathways to the ability regrow limbs, eyes and more.

It’s likely that regenerating skin and directly related tissues in human patients will be one of the first widescale applications of these findings, with recently Weifeng Lin et al. publishing a study in Science involving regrowing a damaged outer ear (pinna) of mice and rats through the addition of retinoic acid (RA), a key element in embryonic development. Specifically they identified that in non-regenerative species of rats and mice the Aldh1a2 gene was not expressed as much as it was in species who do regenerate, which reduces the amount of available RA from the retinaldehyde precursor.

Although there’s a lot that can be said about the pros and cons of turning back on genes that haven’t been active since we were either an embryo or a still-growing-child, understanding these biochemical pathways offers us the prospect of bypassing them in order to restore that which once was thought to be lost forever. Even if we won’t be regrowing limbs yet next year, we might be giving people back their pinna, digits, faces and erase old scars before we know it.

“Closeup of Axolotl in Hand” by [Yaiol AI]

“Purple Tropical Axolotl” by[ Raphael Brasileiro]

hackaday.com/2025/07/28/be-mor…

Sygnia segnala che il vettore di attacco iniziale di Fire Ant CVE-2023-34048, sfrutta la vulnerabilità di scrittura fuori dai limiti nell’implementazione del protocollo DCERPC di vCenter Server che consente l’esecuzione di codice remoto non autenticato. I ricercatori di sicurezza hanno identificato arresti anomali sospetti del processo ‘vmdird‘ sui server vCenter, indicando lo sfruttamento di questa vulnerabilità critica.

Dopo aver ottenuto la compromissione, gli autori della minaccia implementano strumenti sofisticati, tra cui lo script open source vCenter_GenerateLoginCookie.py, per falsificare i cookie di autenticazione e aggirare i meccanismi di accesso. Gli aggressori raccolgono sistematicamente le credenziali vpxuser, ovvero account di sistema creati automaticamente da vCenter con privilegi amministrativi completi sugli host ESXi.

Questo furto di credenziali consente lo spostamento laterale nell’intera infrastruttura di virtualizzazione, poiché gli account vpxuser restano esenti dalle restrizioni della modalità di blocco. Gli autori della minaccia sfruttano anche il CVE-2023-20867, una vulnerabilità di VMware Tools che consente l’esecuzione di comandi host-to-guest non autenticati tramite il cmdlet Invoke-VMScript di PowerCLI.

Capacità di persistenza e metodi di evasione

Fire Ant dimostra notevoli capacità di persistenza attraverso molteplici tecniche di distribuzione di backdoor. Il gruppo installa vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) dannosi con livelli di accettazione impostati su “partner” e distribuiti utilizzando il flag -force per ignorare la convalida della firma. Questi VIB non autorizzati contengono file di configurazione che fanno riferimento a file binari nella cartella ‘/bin‘ e script personalizzati incorporati in ‘/etc/rc.local.d/’ per l’esecuzione all’avvio.

Inoltre, gli aggressori implementano una backdoor HTTP basata su Python denominata autobackup.bin che si collega alla porta 8888 e fornisce funzionalità di esecuzione di comandi remoti. Questo malware modifica ‘/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh’ sugli host ESXi per un’esecuzione persistente. Per eludere ulteriormente il rilevamento, Fire Ant termina il processo vmsyslogd, il demone syslog nativo di VMware, disabilitando di fatto sia la scrittura dei log locali che l’inoltro dei log remoti.

Gli autori della minaccia dimostrano sofisticate capacità di manipolazione della rete compromettendo i bilanciatori di carico F5 tramite lo sfruttamento CVE-2022-1388 e distribuendo webshell su ‘ /usr/local/www/xui/common/css/css.php ‘ per il bridging di rete. Utilizzano webshell di tunneling Neo-reGeorg su server web interni basati su Java e distribuiscono il rootkit Medusa su punti pivot Linux per la raccolta delle credenziali e l’accesso persistente.

Fire Ant utilizza i comandi netsh portproxy per l’inoltro delle porte attraverso endpoint attendibili, aggirando di fatto gli elenchi di controllo degli accessi e le restrizioni del firewall. Il gruppo sfrutta inoltre il traffico IPv6 per aggirare le regole di filtraggio incentrate su IPv4, dimostrando una conoscenza approfondita degli ambienti di rete dual-stack e delle comuni lacune di sicurezza nelle infrastrutture organizzative.

Le organizzazioni devono dare urgentemente priorità alla protezione dei propri ambienti VMware tramite l’applicazione completa di patch, un monitoraggio avanzato delle attività dell’hypervisor e l’implementazione di funzionalità di rilevamento avanzate che vadano oltre le tradizionali soluzioni di sicurezza degli endpoint.

L'articolo Fire Ant all’attacco: come un bug in vCenter apre le porte all’inferno IT proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for failing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly justified the Trump administration’s acceptance of a $400 million jet gifted by the Qatari government in May.

The luxury aircraft — set to be retrofitted for use as Air Force One to the tune of hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and later transferred to President Donald Trump’s private foundation — has raised serious legal and ethical concerns. Multiple experts and lawmakers from both parties have raised questions about whether accepting such a gift from a foreign government violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and federal ethics rules. Additionally, while Trump claims Qatar reached out and offered the jet as a “gift” to him, media reports the opposite is true — his administration approached Qatar.

“It shouldn’t take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document,” said Lauren Harper, Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy. “How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document? The government’s inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption.”

“President Trump’s deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny — not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, which is representing FPF in its litigation. “This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose. The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered.”

The May 2025 memorandum, reportedly signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government, purportedly concluded that the Trump administration’s acceptance of the jet was legally permissible. The administration accepted the jet just days later. The circumstances surrounding the jet deal, including reports that the transaction may have been initiated by the Trump administration and that it followed a lucrative Trump private business arrangement in Qatar, have only heightened calls for transparency.

News that the luxury jet will be donated to Trump’s private presidential library foundation after he is no longer in office follows reports that ABC News and Paramount, which was seeking government approval for a merger with Skydance, resolved litigation with President Trump by agreeing to multimillion-dollar payouts to the foundation.

FPF submitted its FOIA request for the Bondi memo on May 15. Although the DOJ granted expedited processing, the department informed FPF that the estimated time for fulfilling the request was more than 600 days. As of today, the DOJ has failed to release any responsive records or provide a further timeline for production.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

freedom.press/issues/fpf-sues-…

We’ve often thought that it must be harder than ever to learn about computers. Every year, there’s more to learn, so instead of making the gentle slope from college mainframe, to Commodore 64, to IBM PC, to NVidia supercomputer, you have to start at the end. But, really, you don’t. You can always emulate computers from simpler times, and even if you don’t need to, it can be a lot of fun.

That’s the idea behind the MonTana mini-computer. It combines “…ideas from the PDP-11, MIPS, Scott CPU, Game Boy, and JVM to make a relatively simple 16-bit computer…”

The computer runs on Java, so you can try it nearly anywhere. The console is accessed through a web browser and displays views of memory, registers, and even something that resembles a Game Boy screen. You’ll need to use assembly language until you write your own high-level language (we’d suggest Forth). There is, however, a simple operating system, MTOS.

This is clearly made for use in a classroom, and we’d love to teach a class around a computer like this. The whole thing reminds us of a 16-bit computer like the PDP-11 where everything is a two-byte word. There are only 4K bytes of memory (so 2K words). However, you can accomplish a great deal in that limited space. Thanks to the MTOS API, you don’t have to worry about writing text to the screen and other trivia.

It looks like fun. Let us know what you’ll use it for. If you want to go down a level, try CARDIAC. Or skip ahead a little, and teach kids QBasic.

hackaday.com/2025/07/28/learn-…

Sollicciano, un piccolo centro di tortura nel verde, alle porte di Firenze.

Da sabato scorso è completamente allagato il reparto destinato ai detenuti con gravi disturbi psichiatrici (“Articolazione tutela salute mentale, ATSM”), sia al piano superiore, dove ci sono le celle, che a quello inferiore, dove si svolgono le attività riabilitative. Per giorni i detenuti sono stati chiusi in cella, senza poter uscire per attività e momenti di socialità

L’avvocato Enrico Helmut Vincenzini è osservatore delle carceri toscane e lombarde per l’associazione Antigone [...] "È una specie di grotta: le pareti trasudano acqua. Sono entrato in una cella della sesta sezione dove il muro del bagno era nero e schiumava sostanze bianche".

in molti reparti c’è un problema di cimici dei letti, nella struttura ci sono anche frequenti infiltrazioni, perdite d’acqua e umidità (anche se non dell’attuale entità), topi e sporcizia.

The next “Brandung-Live” will be on 27.07.2025 at 20.00h CEST/DST.

News from Potsdam, Brandenburg, the Pirates of Germany and international news – in German.

If you want to join the conversation, just contact info@PiratesOnAir.net.

piratesonair.net/brandung-live…