Out of chaos, comes order. A computer that mimics the apparent randomness found in nature can instantly recover from crashes by repairing corrupted data.

Dubbed a systemic computer, the self-repairing machine now operating at University College London (UCL) could keep mission-critical systems working. For instance, it could allow drones to reprogram themselves to cope with combat damage, or help create more realistic models of the human brain.

Everyday computers are ill suited to modelling natural processes such as how neurons work or how bees swarm. This is because they plod along sequentially, executing one instruction at a time. Nature isn’t like that, says UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. Its processes are distributed, decentralised and probabilistic. And they are fault tolerant, able to heal themselves. A computer should be able to do that — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Los Angeles Times has scrubbed its Web site of malicious code that served browser exploits and malware to potentially hundreds of thousands of readers over the past six weeks.

On 7 February, KrebsOnSecurity heard from two different readers that a subdomain of the LA Times’ news site (offersanddeals.latimes.com) was silently redirecting visitors to a third-party Web site retrofitted with the Blackhole exploit kit. I promptly asked my followers on Twitter if they had seen any indications that the site was compromised, and in short order heard from Jindrich Kubec, director of threat intelligence at Czech security firm Avast.

Kubec checked Avast’s telemetry with its user base, and discovered that the very same LA Times subdomain was indeed redirecting visitors to a Blackhole exploit kit, and that the data showed this had been going on since at least 23 December 2012.

Contacted via email, LA Times spokeswoman Hillary Manning initially said a small number of users trying to access a subdomain of the site were instead served a malicious script warning on 2 and 3 February. But Manning said this was the result of a glitch in Google’s display ad exchange, not a malware attack on the company’s site — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The YahooXtra email service is the victim of two separate, but potentially related malicious attacks, Telecom has said.

The security breach, which began on Saturday morning, saw emails sent to everyone on users’ contact list, asking them to click on a link directing them to an online advertisement.

Telecom responded in a statement issued this afternoon, saying the attacks were believed to have similarly affected other Yahoo mail users using Yahoo servers — via redwolf.newsvine.com