Security researchers have managed to infect a computer with malware embedded in a strand of human DNA. The news sounds like a science-fiction writer's dream, but when biologists want to handle large amounts of DNA samples, they need to digitize them and process them on their computers. But the software that they use to process these samples is usually open-source and often doesn't follow security best practices. So if, by some arcane magic, a DNA sample that needs to be digitized carries a malicious code would it be able to infect a computer? The answer is a definitive yes. "We analyzed open-source…
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