REQUIRED READING FOR DEFENDERS “The girl should be calling men.” Leak exposes Black Basta’s influence tactics. Disclosure of tactics, techniques, and procedures provides rare glimpse into secretive group. Dan Goodin – Apr 8, 2025 4:47 pm | 6 Credit: Getty Images Credit: Getty Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more A leak of 190,000 chat messages traded among members of the Black Basta ransomware group shows that it’s a highly structured and mostly efficient organization staffed by personnel with expertise in various specialities, including exploit development, infrastructure optimization, social engineering, and more. The trove of records was first posted to file-sharing site MEGA. The messages, which were sent from September 2023 to September 2024, were later posted to Telegram in February 2025. ExploitWhispers, the online persona who took credit for the leak, also provided commentary and context for understanding the communications. The identity of the person or persons behind ExploitWhispers remains unknown. Last month’s leak coincided with the unexplained outage of the Black Basta site on the dark web, which has remained down ever since. “We need to exploit as soon as possible” Researchers from security firm Trustwave’s SpiderLabs pored through the messages, which were written in Russian, and published a brief blog summary and a more detailed review of the messages on Tuesday. “The dataset sheds light on Black Basta's internal workflows, decision-making processes, and team dynamics, offering an unfiltered perspective on how one of the most active ransomware groups operates behind the scenes, drawing parallels to the infamous Conti leaks,” the researchers wrote. They were referring to a separate leak of ransomware group Conti that exposed workers grumbling about low pay, long hours, and grievances about support from leaders for their support of Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. “While the immediate impact of the leak remains uncertain, the exposure of Black Basta's inner workings represents a rare opportunity for cybersecurity professionals to adapt and respond.” Some of the TTPs—short for tactics, techniques, and procedures—Black Basta employed were directed at methods for social engineering employees working for prospective victims by posing as IT administrators attempting to troubleshoot problems or respond to fake breaches. “The girl should be calling men,” one Black Basta manager instructed in a chat message. “The guy should be calling women.” This reasoning behind the decision was to exploit trust biases Black Basta believed the targeted workers had. The manager went on to say employees had screened 500 prospective callers for the task. “In the end only 2-3 were competent, and we have a few others as backup. One girl is really good at calling, every fifth call converts into remote access :).” The social-engineering operations were carefully coordinated, with members sharing updates in real-time in chat messages and refining scripts, and psychological lures on the fly. Social engineering was just one weapon in Black Basta’s arsenal. The group also focused heavily on restocking its supply of vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain control over targets’ networks. In the yearlong span the messages cover, members discussed more than 60 specific vulnerabilities with their own CVE tracking designations. When group members learned of a critical vulnerability in Exim—an open source mail server app with more than 3.5 million installations exposed to the Internet—one wrote: “We need to exploit as soon as possible.” The member then provided guidance based on previous experience in targeting Microsoft Exchange servers. The group was also willing to pay premium prices for zero-day exploits from exploit brokers. In one instance, a member pasted an advertisement into a chat for a purported zero-day allowing remote code execution in Juniper firewalls with no authentication necessary. The member wrote: The seller “wants 200k for it, but I’ll negotiate,” likely meaning $200,000. A peer replied, “Well, 200k is a fair price for a 0day.” The other member responded, “yep.” The members also discussed methods for negotiating ransom prices with victims, their frustration when victims refused or countered with much lower prices, and in one case, their worries about the fallout that might result from the disruption they caused to Ascension, a health care provider that lost control of sensitive data for nearly 5.6 million individuals in a 2024 breach. SpiderLabs researchers wrote: Recognizing the heightened scrutiny from law enforcement and government agencies, they opted to frame their actions in a more strategic manner. Instead of demanding payment for decryption, they offered to unlock critical systems as a “gesture of goodwill” while maintaining firm ransom demands for the stolen patient data. This approach was designed to mitigate potential backlash while still securing financial compensation. The chat logs confirm that negotiations with the hospital were particularly challenging. The victim’s representatives, likely with assistance from cybersecurity firms, pushed back against demands, arguing that the organization had already suffered immense financial losses and could not afford a ransom payment. The attackers, aware of previous high-profile healthcare ransomware cases, anticipated strong resistance but remained firm in their demand, emphasizing the reputational damage and regulatory fines the hospital could face if patient records were leaked. At one point, an actor involved in the negotiations noted that this attack was receiving significant attention from government agencies such as the FBI and CISA. Despite the risks, they continued pressing for payment, eventually deciding to leak portions of the stolen data as a pressure tactic. The internal discussions suggest that while some members believed this could force a settlement, others feared that escalating the situation could provoke severe retaliatory measures, like those seen in past cybercrime crackdowns. The level of detail could be useful to defenders who want to make their networks and employees less susceptible to breaches and social engineering, and those who respond to hacks once they’ve occurred. Dan Goodin Senior Security Editor Dan Goodin Senior Security Editor Dan Goodin is Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, where he oversees coverage of malware, computer espionage, botnets, hardware hacking, encryption, and passwords. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and following the independent music scene. Dan is based in San Francisco. Follow him at here on Mastodon and here on Bluesky. Contact him on Signal at DanArs.82. 6 Comments

Some physicists are questioning the idea of space-timeSAKKMESTERKE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Physicists of the 19th century assumed that space was distinct from time – and two researchers now suspect they were correct to do so. Their conclusion, which comes from considering the behaviour of qubits, questions the now-dominant idea that four-dimensional space-time is the fundamental fabric of physical reality. A qubit is an object that has two possible states – for example, two different spins. Because it is quantum, a qubit can also exist in combinations of those states that any familiar object could never take on – a phenomenon known…

Becky Martin and her partner moved to Taiwan Becky Martin 2025-04-09T00:14:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Becky Martin and her partner moved to Taiwan in their 20s in search of adventure and to pay off student loans. A few years later, they returned home to Canada, only to realize they wanted to move to Taiwan permanently. In their 40s, their thinking again shifted, and they realized the draw of family was calling them back home. Seeking adventure and needing to pay off student loans, I moved to Taiwan in my early 20s.I was complaining about my debt when a friend mentioned that teaching English abroad could be a good way out. My job as a child and youth worker in Canada was not covering the bills. I convinced my then-boyfriend to join and we spent the next two and half years teaching kindergarten and elementary students in TaiwanBut after fiscal success, having achieved our goal, we decided to move back to Canada. Returning home in my mid-20s with an inflated ego after a few years of easy money, a comfortable life, and a level of respect as an English teacher proved to be a hindrance to my success in Canada.We lost a lot of our savings in the time it took us to set up our lives again. We struggled to find jobs in Canada that paid enough to meet living expenses and ended up moving four times between cities. We found ourselves once again in a financial hole that was becoming deeper with every passing year.Seeking security in TaiwanSo, 6 years later, after getting married, we returned to Taiwan in 2009, this time, our plan was to relocate permanently.I spent most of my 30s, the next 7 and a half years, in Taiwan teaching English.I loved the job, the lifestyle, having financial security, the opportunity to travel, designing my dream apartment, and eventually, adopting three cats.However, even though we were building a good life in Taiwan, it didn't negate the fact that a significant part of our life was back in Canada, our family.While living in Taiwan, my father-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack, and our world tilted. We went home to mourn with my husband's family but realized two weeks was an insignificant amount of time to process such a loss.Just over a year later my nephew passed away on his school playground at recess. He was 8 years old and I had spent 7 years in Taiwan. I had met him only a few times in his short life.Suddenly, the money, the pretty apartment, and the beautiful view no longer held us captive. My husband and I starkly began to understand that the distance between us and our family meant that we could not really be a part of each other's lives. We could not be there to grieve, celebrate, or share.Home was callingWe've now been back in Ontario, Canada for almost 8 years. I'm involved in my nieces and nephews' lives and I take time to travel with my sisters. My five brothers are no longer strangers to me. I've been able to visit my only living grandparent many times since I've been back — she's in her mid-90s. I see family almost every month now for holidays or sometimes just to get together. At 46, after starting over in Canada again, changing careers, and dealing with the rising cost of living, I doubt that we'll ever be financially comfortable again. We'll probably never own a house, buy a new car, go on fancy vacations, or have a comfortable retirement.But it's all worth it to watch my nieces and nephews grow into adults. I also have time for intimate conversations with my siblings during car rides or while hiking nearby.I found grand adventures out there — lessons and insights that came when I stripped away everything familiar and influential. Growth happened when I pushed beyond my boundaries and realized the only limits were the ones I had created. I also came to see the tremendous value in sometimes staying put. Recommended video

Blue Prince creates a different manor every day (Raw Fury) The latest indie hit is also a surprise game of the year contender, as you try to discover the secrets of your great uncle’s mysterious manor. Since the early 1990s, when Myst and Riven wowed gamers with their pre-rendered CD-ROM graphics, puzzle games have been perfectly content not to explain themselves, letting players infer far more about their plot and setting than they’re explicitly told. And that’s certainly not something that’s gone away in the last few decades, with titles like Gorogoa, Return Of The Obra Dinn, The Talos Principle, and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes proving utterly inscrutable for most, if not all, of their play times. It adds to the air of mystery and helps keep an open mind when you go about solving what can be pretty oblique puzzles. Blue Prince is a little different. It begins by setting out exactly what you’re doing and why, even if its explanation poses more questions than it answers. Baron Herbert Sinclair has died, leaving his estate to you, his grandnephew, with the single stipulation in his will that you will only inherit it if you can locate the 46th room in his 45 room mansion. There are other rules. You’re not allowed to stay overnight, all the items and tools you need for your exploration must remain inside the house, and you’re not allowed to bring anyone in from the outside world. You swiftly discover that’s because Blue Prince has a roguelite structure, and that the house is completely dismantled at the end of each day, ready for you to help build it again from scratch the next morning using a special blueprint. That means you begin each session with just an entrance hall, its doors facing North, East and West. Played from a first person perspective, when you approach one of the doors you’re presented with three random rooms. Some have useful items, others have plenty of doors so you can expand your map more easily, while others have debuffs that in most circumstances you’d want to avoid. Placing a room on the house’s blueprint instantly builds it, so when you walk through the door, it opens into the room you’ve just designated, letting you collect anything inside and use its doors – if it has any – to build new rooms, corridors, and store cupboards. You’re limited in your house building endeavours by the number of footsteps you take. Starting each day with 50, you use one each time you enter a room, with some knocking more from your total depending on their type. While you can top them up by eating food you find around the house, or receiving buffs from certain rooms, the number of footsteps you’ve taken is a constant consideration in your travels and discourages unnecessary backtracking. Run out of steps and it’s time to end the day and start again from that lonely entrance hall, but that’s just one of the things that ends runs that typically last 30 to60 minutes. You’ll also find yourself boxed in, your layout reaching the edges on both sides, or having all available doors plugged by dead ends. Generally, cul-de-sac rooms also have upsides, like giving you free footsteps or keys used to enter locked doors. But there are other times you place them by accident. If your selection of three rooms contains two that require a special crystal, and you’re fresh out of crystals, you can be forced to build rooms you would usually prefer not to. While not beautiful, Blue Prince’s cel-shaded art style is more than enough to provide an atmospheric and consistent backdrop to your exploration. It’s also highly polished and completely bug free, its interface proving clean and responsive. Laying down rooms and entering them is quick and seamless, giving runs a wonderful sense of flow that really lets you get lost in your task. Its puzzles are similarly pithy. Most runs will feature both the Billiard Room, where you’ll find an increasingly complex mathematical puzzle built into a dartboard, and the Parlour, which has a logic game constructed around three treasure boxes, each of which has a statement on it that may or may not be true. They’re brain teasing but pleasantly so, taking seconds rather than minutes to solve. The real puzzle is the house, which has a tantalising antechamber permanently fixed in the centre of the farthest northern reach of your blueprint. You’re led to understand that it’s the gateway to what may be the 46th room, but just reaching the antechamber, let alone opening one of its four doors, is a puzzle of its own. The blueprint is everything (Raw Fury) You’ll also find certain rooms interact with one another. Sometimes that confers extra bonuses, but other times rooms’ relationships are more essential. The Pump Room supplies or removes water from other rooms, while another gives them power. The Security Room lets you change how keycard doors work, but only in concert with the breaker box – which you’ll find in a Utility Closet. Or there’s the Laboratory that lets you conduct ‘experiments’ that offer rewards when you build specific rooms or trigger certain events. Unlocking new rooms as you progress, which are retained for subsequent runs, you’re rated on how many you’ve managed to add to your blueprint at the end of each day; the game acknowledging their layout and composition in its final appraisal of that day’s results. You can also find tools. The metal detector for example, highlights extra coins and keys; the lockpick opens some doors without using up a key, while the Coat Check lets you save a single item and reclaim it another day. The game advises you to have a pen and paper handy to make notes, and it’s not kidding. While some gamers won’t be fans of that idea, we found writing things down was all but essential unless you have a photographic memory. There are more than enough mysteries to unpick without the added challenge of forgetting some you already know the answers to. More Trending There are moments of frustration – being forced to box yourself in when you were previously having a really good run or exhausting your supply of keys or footsteps just before getting to the anteroom do not inspire joy. There are also sometimes fairly lengthy periods where you don’t feel as though you’re making any progress at all, with runs finishing without any major breakthroughs, but then you’ll get a big step up making everything feel exciting again. The obscurity of its overarching challenge, roguelite structure, and having to write things down won’t appeal to everyone. Neither will its mid-budget art style and sense of gradually evolving repetition. But if those things sound intriguing, Blue Prince (which pun fans may already have spotted references blueprints) is a fascinating slow building game that rewards persistence and curiosity like few others. Blue Prince review summary In Short: A beautifully made first person puzzle roguelite that demands tenacity and patience (and writing things down) to unravel its fascinating mysteries. Pros: Brilliantly realised mechanics, sparse interface without a bug in sight, and a slow drip feed of new rooms and interactions that keep it feeling fresh. Cons: Some runs can feel as though you’re making no progress and requiring pen and paper will be off-putting to some. Score: 8/10 Formats: PlayStation 5* (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: TBAPublisher: Raw FuryDeveloper: DogubombRelease Date: 10th April 2025Age Rating: 3 *available on PlayStation Plus Game Catalog, Game Pass Ultimate, and PC Game Pass from day one Some rooms are more mysterious than others (Raw Fury) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Things are getting too meta in this dystopian landscape. Blade Runner 2049‘s production company Alcon Entertainment has sued Tesla and Elon Musk for allegedly feeding stills from the Warner Bros. picture to an AI image generator to create promotional material for the car manufacturer. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Alcon’s trademark claim, while dismissed, has prompted a re-examining of the peculiar similarities between Blade Runner 2049 and Tesla’s ad campaign that allows smaller cases of copyright infringement to continue against the company. The image in contention is a still of Ryan Gosling’s Officer K standing in the orange-hued wasteland expanse next to a futuristic car. The suit from Alcon claims that the still was used to create “unlicensed promotional materials” while including film distributor Warner Bros. Discovery for “facilitating the partnership” in a violation of Alcon Entertainment’s trademarks. The judge ruled in favor of Warner Bros. and Tesla, which had partnered up for the robotaxi’s unveiling. At the event, Tesla boss Elon Musk debuted an image of his Cybercab displayed in an eerily similar ad that looks like the scene in question from Blade Runner 2049. Tesla denied the use of trademarked materials; Alcon had accused the company of using an AI image generator to strip imagery from the scene from 2049 without using licensed permission. The grounds for the ruling were that Alcon was only working off “information and belief ” in this copyright infringement case, according to THR. The technicality may have won the battle, however Alcon revealed in the court case that it had denied Tesla the use of Blade Runner 2049 hours before the presentation in question. The judge ruled, “Given the tight timeframe Musk and Tesla were working with in light of their last-minute request—and the resulting last-minute denial—to make use of BR2049, it is not at all implausible for Plaintiff to allege on information-and-belief that they made use of an AI image-generator to come up with the finished product.” Most of the claims can therefore move forward—except for one which had initially invoked the Lanham Act (aka the Trademark Act of 1946, which Alcon had claimed Tesla violated through its barring of false association), as Musk only mentioned the film once during the event, but not in a way that implied legitimacy to Alcon’s accusations. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

House of Material and Character / SHROFFLEóNSave this picture!Courtesy of SHROFFLEóN Architects: SHROFFLEóN Area Area of this architecture project Area:  7000 ft² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. Rarely does one get a chance to redesign a house that has a recent memory of its past owners. More reason for the son to keep the homage alive and for us to do justice to redesigning while keeping the essence alive. The conservationists within us felt a nudge. Adaptive reuse and conservation were the two keywords that came to us instinctively. The questions that arose and the ones we attempted to answer thereby: How do we familiarise new into the existing structure while keeping its character alive? How do we bring elements such as a greenhouse, a pool, an entrance porch, and a semi-open verandah to enhance the experience? How do we make it our own?Save this picture!While our first instinct was to pull the structure down, we took a conscious call to keep the spatial setting as intact as possible while giving it a new character with contemporary materials. One with elements of surprise, richness of materials, and an ambience that annotates warmth and a homely environment.Save this picture!Save this picture!The functional spaces such as the living rooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, and washrooms stayed where however they received a complete redesign, spatially and visually. The entire design, internal and external, has been thought through and designed on the lines of brutalist architecture combined with a modern aesthetic, one that is true to its materials and elements that create a sense of order and cohesion. The design of the building emphasizes the structural and engineering features rather than decorative design and poses a more functional and practical approach.Save this picture!The façade is made of a visible steel structure and raw stone-clad walls, combined with glass and black aluminium frames to create full-height sliding windows and doors on the ground floor and balconies and terraces on the upper floors. The details with which we have designed the skeleton – the frame and the stone wall with the steel structure have been critical in how the exterior appears. It allows the materials to coexist with coherence while giving each other space. These were catalysts added to the solidness of the old structure to create a synergy and resonance – fragments to the whole.Save this picture!The design of the porch and verandah with the glass partition and walls allow the living room to be a part of the outside – and vice versa. Through the architectural design of this Lonavala house, we tried to assign more meaning to each element in the building that was accredited with a different materiality. The windows jutting out is a classic language that expresses this feature. One can see that the walls, ceilings, floors, windows, and doors each have a unique character assigned with stone, wood, concrete, and steel. Through these characteristics, it was our attempt to create individualism while making it appear like they were a part of the whole.Save this picture!The greenhouse was a refreshing addition to the rear end of the house that brought natural light into the home. The indirect light comes through the front of the house and makes it warm during the late evenings with cool breezes coming in from the southwest direction. Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The dining area has achieved a character that we were only able to fully experience after the house was built. It came in as a surprising delight. With the pool on one side and the greenhouse on the other, the dining area has a tranquil character of charming connectedness and openness. One that every second home requires, aspires, and must be endowed. The House of Material and Character, for us, was one that allowed us to work within the framework provided but demonstrate our expertise in the details, material synergies, and designing for modern living.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this officeSHROFFLEóNOffice••• MaterialSteelMaterials and TagsPublished on April 08, 2025Cite: "House of Material and Character / SHROFFLEóN" 08 Apr 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028839/house-of-material-and-character-shroffleon&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

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The pursuit of de-extinction has broken new ground yet again, as three young wolves are carrying on the legacy of the dire wolf species that disappeared from Earth around 12,500 years ago. Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences, the company leading the de-extinction charge, recently declared that the dire wolf has returned for good.The three wolves brought to life by the company — Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi — emulate many unmistakable dire wolf characteristics, seen in their size, skull shape, and stunning white coats. This breakthrough was made possible with technology that allowed scientists to alter gray wolf genes so they would mirror extinct dire wolf genes; while serving as a stepping stone for future de-extinction endeavors, the dire wolf project may also pave the way for the future of conservation. When Did Dire Wolves Live? Romulus and Remus and puppies on the Iron Throne (Images Courtesy of Colossal Biosciences)The dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) once roamed throughout North and South America during the Late Pleistocene, facing extinction near the end of the last ice age. The species may have been doomed by its diet; it dined mostly on megaherbivores, many of which would vanish in the Americas starting around 13,000 years ago, leaving dire wolves with less prey to eat.Long after their demise, dire wolves rose up the ladder of pop culture thanks to their fictionalized appearance in the Game of Thrones series. While fantasy fans have become familiar with the dire wolf, the species' esteem does not stop there; through generations of oral tradition, the dire wolf has also served as a mythological cornerstone for the MHA Nation, a federally recognized Native American Nation in North Dakota.  Read More: Fact or Fiction: Are Mysterious Dire Wolves Real?Reviving Extinct GenesColossal’s dire wolf project started with DNA extraction from two fossils — a 13,000-year-old tooth found in Ohio and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone found in Idaho. As scientists analyzed these fossils, they encountered new revelations on dire wolf evolution. The company announced in a statement that gray wolves and dire wolves share 99.5 percent of their DNA code based on genetic analysis, although prior studies have previously asserted that dire wolves may be related more closely to jackals rather than gray wolves. Scientists at Colossal used DNA from the two fossils to pinpoint parts of the dire wolf genome that gave the species its unique traits. To bring this gene expression back into the modern era, they had to first acquire a donor gray wolf donor genome through a non-invasive blood drawing procedure that gave them epithelial progenitor cells (EPCs).They then performed multiplex gene editing, a process that allowed them to edit 20 sites across 14 genes in the gray wolf genome. Among these edits, 15 of them targeted extinct dire wolf variants, activating gene expressions that haven’t been seen for over 10,000 years. It is worth noting, though, that throughout this process, dire wolf DNA was only used as a reference point for edits of the grey wolf genome. The scientists cloned embryos containing these edited genes and then surgically put them inside a surrogate dog that would eventually birth the wolves. A Growing Pack (Images Courtesy of Colossal Biosciences)Romulus and Remus, now about 6 months old, were the first to be born from this project. Spending their days at a 2000+ acre preserve, they've already passed many developmental milestones and are now weighing upwards of 80 pounds. Khaleesi, only 2 months old at this point, is still considered too young to join Romulus and Remus, but she will inevitably join the growing pack once she's large enough.The wolves will continue to be monitored by care staff at the preserve while scientists keep an eye on their progress over time. Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s Chief Science Officer, says the dire wolf is known to have been an adaptable species since it has lived through warmer interglacial periods and colder ice ages. “They’re clearly adaptable, behaviorally plastic animals, and as they grow and as they start to interact with their environment, we’re going to learn about this plasticity,” says Shapiro. “We’ll learn about the way that they interact with different types of habitats, different types of temperatures and climate regimes.”According to Matt James, Colossal’s Chief Animal Officer, the company has discussed expanding the pack size to around eight wolves to fit a more natural wolf pack structure.Upholding Conservation and BiodiversityThe identity of Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi has some independent scientists voicing qualms about the authenticity of dire wolf de-extinction — whether these wolves are truly the dire wolves of the distant past or just gray wolves that have been genetically modified to appear as dire wolves. Shapiro notes that when it comes to de-extinction, Colossal is “not about creating perfect genetic copies of something that used to be there, but about restoring lost ecological functions and enhancing biodiversity.” Despite the air of hesitancy partially clouding the results, the project strikes a hopeful chord for wildlife conservation. The same technological advancements used by Colossal to give life to Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi have also allowed the company to birth two litters of cloned red wolves, a critically endangered species native to the southeastern U.S. Gene editing, according to the company, will become an important tool to help species endure a changing world. A vital goal of their core de-extinction projects — involving the dire wolf, the woolly mammoth, and the thylacine (also known as the Tasmanian Tiger) — is to direct attention toward bolstering conservation and reducing loss of biodiversity.“I think what Colossal can offer with our technologies is opportunities to help recover populations at scale in places where they should be reintroduced responsibly in a way that can be focused on coexistence,” says James.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:National Park Service. Dire WolfThe University of Adeliade. Ancient DNA research reveals evolutionary secrets of Game of Thrones dire wolves.Jack Knudson is an assistant editor at Discover with a strong interest in environmental science and history. Before joining Discover in 2023, he studied journalism at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University and previously interned at Recycling Today magazine.