
New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection - triplesec
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/25/491261766/new-virus-breaks-the-rules-of-infection
======
AceJohnny2
This reminds me of the story between a cable-box developer and crackers. I'll
need to find the exact story, but it goes something like this: The developer
would send an over-the-air update, the crackers would crack it within days and
provide that to their userbase. Usually the crackers would just nop out the
few instructions that branched into DRM code or something.

At some point, the crackers noticed that the OTAs seemed to include "dead"
code, that wasn't being called by anything. Just in case it was used by the
live code, they left it in. It didn't prevent their cracks.

Then, a little bit down the line, an OTA update made use of all those pieces
of dead code to simultaneously harden legitimate boxes against cracking, and
brick hacked boxes. The developer had, in effect, distributed his
countermeasures piecemeal in order to pass the crackers guards and be included
in the cracked network, and in one delayed action assembled and activated the
countermeasure.

Edit: Ah, here was the story from 2001 about the "Black Sunday Kill", and it
was DirectTV: [https://slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directvs-
secret-...](https://slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directvs-secret-war-
on-hackers)

And it looks like this was the guy who did it:
[http://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all](http://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all)

I got a bunch of the details wrong (hey, it's been 15 years!) but that's the
gist of it. The Slashdot story has the meat of it!

~~~
DigitalJack
That's a very interesting line of thought.

I had a slightly different thought, along the lines of forward error
correction and splitting up the coded message to make sure the loss of one or
two pieces is tolerable.

~~~
AceJohnny2
You mean something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing)
or even RAID6's Reed-Solomon codes?

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jobu
Surprisingly, sci-news.com has a better writeup on this than NPR -
[http://www.sci-news.com/biology/guaico-culex-virus-
multicomp...](http://www.sci-news.com/biology/guaico-culex-virus-
multicomponent-animal-virus-04138.html)

 _“Although multicomponent genomes are relatively common among RNA viruses
that infect plants and fungi, this method of genome organization has not
previously been seen in animal viruses.”_

Edit: Thinking about this more, I wonder if this might be some sort of virus
crossover vector from plants to animals? Mosquitos are in a somewhat unique
position ecologically - they require nectar from plants to survive, and they
may bite several different animals to acquire blood for reproduction
(spreading viruses along the way).

~~~
mataug
> Surprisingly, sci-news.com has a better writeup on this than NPR

Are sci-news's usual writeups bad ? Why is it surprising ? Other from sci-news
seemed fine to me .

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's more that NPR's write-ups are usually quite good.

~~~
spikels
Seems like whenever NPR reports on subjects I happen to know really really
well I find myself disappointed. Makes me wonder about the rest of their
reporting.

~~~
paavokoya
NPR is almost as bad as CNN and such, but it's marketed towards intellectuals
through linguistics. I noticed whenever they speak on a topic I'm deeply
familiar with, they use overly-complicated wordage to get the point across
while missing important details. Almost like how "over-designed" websites
usually have terrible backends.

~~~
triplesec
Still beats most radio media or TV 'news' for attempting to be accurate!

------
otto_ortega
Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could
transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a
way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all?

As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and
Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several
researchs suggesting they serve no purpose on keeping the enviromental
equilibrium (if they are gone, they won't be missed, the enviroment will be
fine...)

On a side note, reading "U.S. Army Medical Research" , "Infectious Diseases",
"new virus" and "mosquitos" in the same article makes no good to my
paranoia...

~~~
DicksenZuider
Exterminating all mosquitoes could doom the animals that eat them.

Birds, insects, spiders, salamanders, lizards and frogs could lose their
primary food source.

Wiping out a large part of the ecology could be a disaster.

~~~
kin
Although I remember reading somewhere that mosquitos have a negative footprint
on ecology. There's definitely a ton of research at the moment on mosquito
control. There was another article on HN a few years ago on a device that
tracks and kills mosquitos w/ tiny lasers that can't harm humans. Apologize
for lack of source, I'll try and dig them up.

EDIT: found it! wasn't too hard to find haha. And it seems other replies have
already provided source on mosquitos and their net benefit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)

~~~
DicksenZuider
What does "negative footprint" mean?

~~~
kin
As in the do more harm than good to the ecosystem.

~~~
takeda
So just like humans?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Ecosystem does not care, it just _is_. So far it seems that humans are the
only entities in the ecosystem that care. Hell, the "bad" and "good" state of
the ecosystem is _defined_ as its ability to support human life and growth.

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mcherm
I think an alien looking at life on earth might find it very peculiar that so
many of our life forms split into 2 independent parts that are unable to
reproduce unless they match up with a partner of the opposite "sex". This is
no stranger than that -- but it's fascinating to us who haven't encountered it
before.

The "sex" thing turns out to have big advantages: mostly that it allows for
faster evolution by allowing mixing of genes between the two different genders
so new advantageous traits can be spread through the population much faster
than if each organism simply copied itself. I'll bet this scheme has
advantages too -- the smaller size of the components (useful for getting
through various membranes and other defenses) is an obvious one, there may be
others that are less obvious.

~~~
dexwiz
Might be strange that we have sexes. Might also be strange that we only have 2
sexes. Many plants have two different generational types (haploid and
diploid). Meaning each "generation" alternates between two different organism
types. Fungi have both sexual and assexual reproduction [2]. But their sexual
reproduction occurs when two cells directly fuse and then undergo meiosis into
haploid spores instead of a diploid organism. Haplodiploidy occurs in insects
where males are haploid by females are diploid [3]. Sex can be much more
complicated than what it is in humans. Alien species may have even more
complicated systems for genetic recombination.

[1] [http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/Ferns/Sci-
Media/Animatio...](http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/Ferns/Sci-
Media/Animations-and-Interactives/Fern-life-cycle) [2]
[https://www.boundless.com/biology/textbooks/boundless-
biolog...](https://www.boundless.com/biology/textbooks/boundless-biology-
textbook/fungi-24/characteristics-of-fungi-149/fungi-reproduction-591-11810/)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy)

~~~
seangrogg
> Sex can be much more complicated than what it is in humans.

Completely arbitrary anecdotal evidence would suggest otherwise.

~~~
stonogo
GP was referencing reproduction, not politics or recreation.

~~~
seangrogg
Fair. I've never actually attempted it in a reproductive manner, so I have no
evidence there.

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jotux
This would make for an interesting scifi plot. A global virus spreads that has
multiple parts and people must limit their contact with specific people or
risk acquiring components that activate the parts of the virus they carry.

~~~
cmurf
[http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Vengeance_Factor_(epi...](http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Vengeance_Factor_\(episode\))

~~~
jcoffland
That episode of STNG is about a virus which targets a specific DNA.

> In sickbay, Crusher reveals to Riker that Volnoth was killed by a
> microvirus. The interesting part was that the microvirus was specifically
> designed for a certain strain of DNA in Acamarians, approximately one in a
> million. Riker notes that this is unnatural, which leads Crusher to presume
> that Volnoth was murdered.

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bluejekyll
All I can think about after reading that is how to create some set of logic
gates for data transfer. What if different combinations of the parts of a
virus could be formed into different actual viruses and produce a single new
output variant.

For Example, you could combine 00, 01, 11, 10 and then the two part virus
would output the result of a NAND operation. We could have naturally occurring
computations in nature.

Each mosquito could be seen as a single "cpu" and it's output would be to
infect another mosquito. Not sure how you'd collect all the results though, or
how you'd not just have endless cycles... perhaps the life of each individual
cell could be encoded in DNA/RNA where two virus parts can only come together
if their DNA/RNA has the same "clock cycle" encoded (similar to lamport/vector
clocks).

~~~
jcoffland
How would you order the operations?

~~~
dmichulke
Not an expert but I suppose it's sufficient if you model the virus such that
an eventual equilibrium is (or contains) your solution.

~~~
jcoffland
That's some serious hand waving.

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kens
How is this different from the hepatitis D virus? Hepatitis D isn't complete,
and can only propagate if there is a hepatitis B infection. In other words,
you can only get hepatitis D if you already have the hepatitis B virus, and
then it makes things worse.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_D)

~~~
zbjornson
Hepatitis delta is a satellite virus, of which there are many. The virus
described in this article doesn't seem to be considered a satellite virus
because, presumably because no part of it is replication-competent. It's a
single virus that has its genome segments packaged separately.

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ChuckMcM
Ok, off tangent a bit, but if you randomly sample mosquitoes, those mosquitos
have limited flight range, and you find things about the blood meals they have
eaten. Are you at risk of invading the privacy of people who live near the
mosquitoes?

~~~
etendue
Very interesting question. What if, by chance, you tested that blood and found
it positive for HIV? What are your ethical obligations viz. notification as
one example? (Mosquitos can't _transmit_ HIV, but they can capture the virus
while feeding)

~~~
Ericson2314
> Mosquitos can't transmit HIV

Never thought of that. Thank goodness!

------
gall
Hairspray won't do it alone, but hairspray mixed with lipstick and perfume
will be toxic, and untraceable.

~~~
pmyjavec
Perfect

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MollyR
Wow that's crazy. It could explain why certain viruses affect people and not
others. The afflicted could have latent viral compatible genes in their
personal genomes. It'll be really interesting what this means for vaccines.

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yarg
This is very cool, It rather effectively simulates sexual reproduction in a
virus.

Furthermore, the host could develop an immune response to one strain of a
module, catch another strain and the other dormant modules once again become
active.

One scary facet of the way that this works, if there exist module combinations
that prove lethal to the hosts, there is a significantly reduced likelihood
that the infection will burn itself out - the lethal version can exist spread
out across the population randomly combining to strike down some poor innocent
mosquito.

Disclaimer: I'm not a virologist, and there's a good chance I'm full of shit.

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joshpadnick
Shamir's Secret Sharing [1] for viruses.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing)

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wimagguc
In rather abstract evolution mechanics, this isn't much different from
requiring male and female counterparts to procreate. All that happens here is
that smaller entities are a better fit for the environment, while only a
combination of them stores the full information required for another entity to
be created. In simulations this has been seen quite often.

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kusmi
Having the genome separated between multiple coinfecting particles is actually
quite common among plant viruses.

------
jacquesm
It's funny how us humans tend to figure out laws and rules and forget that
they are _derived_ , not dictated and that nature will do it's own thing
regardless of what we've so far figure out.

The virus is not breaking any rules, we messed up in figuring out what the
rules were in the first place.

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Severian
Just a thought: I wonder if the virus uses some form of redundancy encoding
like certain RAID or file XOR systems use. I wonder if RNA/DNA has a checksum
or data correction code somewhere?

It would be really neat if this virus does something like that. It might be
why the 5th viral component is not required.

~~~
toufka
It actually is likely the opposite. Many viruses deliberately avoid
checksumming and error correcting, as that's how it generates better modular
parts - through errors and variation. Some viruses like HPV actively shut down
their host's error-correction equipment, so that they may be more effective
(why HPV infections greatly increase chance of cancer). If you have a multi-
part system where your factory is producing literally billions of variants of
each, and you want better parts, one way to do that is to have each part be
slightly different. Those that naturally work best together will go on to be
more, well, virulent.

~~~
Fomite
Along with that, one of the reasons HIV is so hard to design a vaccine for is
it's absurdly high error rate, which drives a huge amount of genetic diversity
even within-host.

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zellyn
Reminds me of this…
[https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directv...](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directvs-
secret-war-on-hackers)

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known
A team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has
found a mosquito virus that's broken up into pieces. And the mosquito needs to
catch several of the pieces to get an infection.

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ggchappell
Instead of thinking of this as a virus in pieces, might it be better to think
of it as a symbiosis (with the "bio" part being deemphasized a bit)?

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diyseguy
What's in it for the virus? Why 5 pieces? What's the evolutionary advantage?
Does the virus have 5 sexes? Weird.

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whitehat2k9
It's like nature's equivalent to Ubisoft's episodic release schedule of
Hitman.

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orf
Nature is fucking crazy.

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pai_dpiper
This is like the Power Rangers of viruses - red, green, blue, pink, yellow
UNITE!!!

~~~
slowmovintarget
I prefer to think of it as Voltron... but potato potahto.

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impostervt
How is this not called the Voltron Virus?

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xfactor973
With our powers combined...

