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Google Whacked by Hack Attack

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

When a multibillion-dollar corporation gets quietly and spec­tacularly hacked, the last thing you expect it to do is announce the breach to the world. Yet that’s exactly what Google did last Janu­ary after discovering hackers had breezed past its security measures to burrow deep into its network.

The well-coordinated attack, dubbed Operation Aurora, began with an instant message to a Google employee in China that included a link to a malicious Web site. When the employee clicked on the link, the nefarious code downloaded to a computer, enabling the attackers to control it and hop to other machines in the company’s U.S. network. e intruders accessed a software repository used by Google develop­ers, siphoned intellectual property, and viewed basic Gmail account information for at least two human rights activists who focus on China.

No fewer than 27 other com­panies— financial institutions and defense contractors among them—were also attacked, but most remained mum. Google went public in part to counter the silence of its fellow victims. Google cofounder Sergey Brin said in February that “if more companies were to come forward with respect to these sorts of security incidents and issues, I think we would all be safer.” Google’s admission made other companies realize the sophistica­tion of the attacks they might face, says Alan Paller, director of research at the sans Institute, which trains computer security professionals.

Although determining the precise source of a hack is often impossible, fingers pointed at China as the likely origin, sparking a volley of political posturing from Beijing, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. In its blog post reporting the cyber attack, Google announced it would stop censoring search results in China and threatened to pull out of the country entirely. In the end, the company only added a link to its Chinese search page, allowing users to view uncensored results through its Hong Kong-based search engine, Kim Zetter

FAMILY GENOMICS LINKS DNA TO DISEASE

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

A DECADE AGO, SEQUENCING the dna in a person’s entire genome cost up to $1 billion, a pr ice so prohibitive that only a few genetics pioneers had the honor of having it done. In 2010 the cost per genome tumbled to less than $10,000, making it possible to study dna varia­tions within a single family. Almost immediately such famil­ial genome sequencing proved its value, uncovering mutations responsible for diseases caused by defects in a single gene. “There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of diseases falling into this category.   is approach will allow us to very quickly find the genetic culprit,” says Leroy Hood, a geneticist at the Institute for Systems Biol­ogy in Seattle.

Earlier efforts to hunt down disease-causing genes— so-called genomewide associa­tion studies—frequently came up empty-handed because medical researchers had to take cost-saving shortcuts. Instead of trolling an individual’s entire genome, they limited their search to dna regions where variations are most often seen across large populations. “It was assumed that common variants might be responsible for common diseases, but many diseases turn out to have many different rare variants at their root,” says James Lupski, a medi­cal geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. That’s why the power of whole-genome sequencing blows us away. It’s the only way we can get at these rare variants.”

Lupski himself suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropa­thy, a rare hereditary disorder that reduces sensation in the limbs. Although neither of his parents had the condition, three of his seven siblings are also affected by it. “For 20 years we’ve been looking for the gene and mutation behind my family’s neuropathy, but we never found the variant,” he says.   Then, in 2010, collaborating with his colleague Richard Gibbs and other Baylor geneticists, Lupski sequenced his own genome —and “Boom! We found it,” he says. (Each of his parents, it turns out, carried a different recessive mutation of the same gene. Consequently, only their children who inherited one from each par­ent developed the disorder.)

Other groups are finding similar success with whole-genome sequencing. A 2010 study led by Hood in collabo­ration with the University of Washington and the University of Utah sequenced the entire genomes of four family mem­bers. The mother and father were healthy, but their son and daughter both suffered from a rare hereditary disorder called Miller syndrome, which causes craniofacial deformation. The gene responsible was unknown until Hood’s team identified a recessive gene inherited from both parents. If you could diag­nose the disease in utero, you might be able to provide pre­ventive drugs before symptoms appeared, Hood says. Still unclear is whether whole-genome sequencing will work as well at identifying the culprits for cancer, heart disease, and other disorders believed to involve multiple genes rather than a single muta­tion. Progress may be slower on that front, Duke University geneticist David Goldstein says. But even when the genetic mechanism is more complex, he adds, the new approach might yield insights into underlying disease processes that could pave the way for more finely targeted treatments.

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