We have often discussed ‘inflection points’ – events that result in significant, revolutionary change.
During the past couple of decades, most inflection points have been related to electronics and communications – the Internet, computers, cellphones and the like. In the next decade, Biotech will jump to the forefront, bringing changes that will impact humanity hugely, more than anything that humans have experienced in the past century.
Craig Venter is regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century for his many revolutionary contributions to genomic research. Now he is thinking of bugs that could swim in a pond and soak up sunlight and secrete oil; of bugs that could gobble exhaust and exude fresh air.
What is strange about Venter is that the fantasies he concocts actually come true. He dreamed of mapping the human genome faster than anyone, and he did it. He dreamed of creating a synthetic organism, and he made it. In 2003, he sailed around the planet in search of new forms of life and returned two years later after discovering more species than anyone, ever.
In 2008, Venter’s lab built a genome which replicates the DNA of a bacterium. In 2010 they announced that they brought the synthetic DNA to life. In theory, this leaves just one step to the building of a custom species, crossing the threshold to ‘designer life’.
Venter is pushing forward with designing new organisms entirely from synthetic DNA, which would be a radical leap forward. Here are the attractions:
* Because cells reproduce, they can be used for biomanufacturing. Custom organisms could produce in bulk while feeding on pollutants or solar energy.
* Conventional agriculture probably cannot keep pace with the world’s increasing population. Strains of algae could secrete proteins, using less land and water than traditional crops.
* Bio-machinery could result in ‘distributed manufacturing’ using microbes. For example, people could synthesise bugs and grow them at home.
Of course, synthetic biology brings the potential for catastrophe. The greater the reach of bio-machinery, the more urgent the need to understand the risks: many environmental groups worry that synthetic bugs could become the ultimate invasive species.
Venter and his proponents claim that a synthetic bug can be designed to die without chemical support, and has little chance of surviving in the competitive natural ecosystem. In 2010, the President’s bioethics commission found ‘limited risks’.
Craig Venter’s synthetic biology could indeed backfire into biological calamity. But it also offers a transformative approach to many problems which have no available solutions.
Flame & Stuxnet – automation malware with common heritage
A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyber espionage operation.
Dubbed ‘Flame’, the malware is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years. A chunk of code used in both Stuxnet and Flame indicates that the developers shared their work.
Early analysis of Flame indicates that it is designed primarily to spy on the users of infected computers and steal data from them, including documents, recorded conversations and keystrokes. It also opens a backdoor to infected systems to allow the attackers to tweak the toolkit and add new functionality.
Among Flame’s many modules is one that turns on the internal microphone of an infected machine to secretly record conversations that occur either over Skype or in the computer’s near vicinity; a module that turns Bluetooth-enabled computers into a Bluetooth beacon, which scans for other Bluetooth-enabled devices in the vicinity to siphon names and phone numbers from their contacts folder; and a module that grabs and stores frequent screenshots of activity on the machine, such as instant-messaging and e-mail communications, then sends them via a covert SSL channel to the attackers’ command-and-control servers.
The malware also has a sniffer component that can scan all of the traffic on an infected machine’s local network and collect usernames and password hashes that are transmitted across the network. The attackers appear to use this component to hijack administrative accounts and gain high-level privileges to other machines and parts of the network.
Flame is ‘20 times larger than Stuxnet’ the previous malware that raised awareness of the problems. Like Stuxnet, Flame has the ability to spread by infecting USB sticks using the same vulnerabilities. It also uses the same print spooler to spread to computers on a local network. This suggests that the authors of Flame have had access to the creators of Stuxnet.
Unlike Stuxnet, however, Flame does not replicate automatically. This is likely intended to control the spread of the malware and lessen the likelihood that it will be detected.
How long before there is serious retaliation?
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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