The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced their iconic Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before Midnight today, 10 seconds closer than their last update in 2022, and closer than any previous point in its nearly 8-decade history — primarily as a result of Russia’s unprovoked and genocidal war against Ukraine, but also with a nod toward the increasing risks of accelerating climate change and the potential for future pandemics.
And to illustrate the latter problem, they have a very disturbing article up on how researchers managed to hack a lab’s pathogen containment system — and then published a step-by-step tutorial as to how they did it!
Negative pressure systems help keep dangerous pathogens contained in laboratories and hospital rooms. Given the potentially dire results should microbes escape one of these containment facilities, researchers at a major US university sought to probe whether negative pressure systems could be hacked. The team not only disrupted such a system at a real laboratory, but the researchers also laid out in great detail how to perform the hack.
While addressing loopholes in lab security is critical, by posting their paper online, the researchers broadcast the study’s potentially dangerous results to anyone with an internet connection. It’s a paper that highlights a worrisome trend in the life sciences. Scientists are conducting dual-use research— research in which knowledge generated with beneficial aims can also serve malicious ends—with little oversight and then freely disseminating their findings.
