NASA’s James Webb Telescope is the Trending Malware Carrier

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures images of thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula. 

A "giant space tarantula" has been caught by NASA's powerful James Webb Telescope. At 161,000 light years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the nickname for 30 Doradus – the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest our Milky Way, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on December 25, 2021, and the first set of images taken by the powerful telescope was released in July 2022. Cybersecurity officers have identified a unique attack where hackers are exploiting a hugely popular deep space image taken from NASA's James Webb telescope to infiltrate computers with malware.

A newly-discovered hacking campaign is exploiting an image from the James Webb Telescope to infect targets with malware. Securonix Threat research team has identified a persistent Golang-based attack campaign, that incorporates an equally interesting strategy by leveraging the deep field image taken from the James Webb and obfuscated Golang (or Go) programming language payloads to infect the target system with the malware.

"Initial infection begins with a phishing email containing a Microsoft Office attachment. The document includes an external reference hidden inside the document's metadata which downloads a malicious template file," said the researchers.

The James Webb Telescope has managed to clear out the dusty filaments in the picture that was earlier used to cover the whole observation. In addition to weeding out the dusty filaments, the telescope has also managed to pick up distant background galaxies.

The United States Postal Service is releasing a stamp celebrating @NASAWebb this week. Officials from @NASA and @USPS will dedicate the stamp at a ceremony open to the public on Sept. 8 at 11 am ET at the @PostalMuseum.

https://go.nasa.gov/3qmB1tr

~@NASAGoddard

"Take a moment to stare into the thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula. @NASAWebb reveals details of the structure and composition of the nebula, as well as dozens of background galaxies," the US space agency wrote on Instagram while sharing a mesmerizing image of the "space tarantula".

Scientists can also figure out the details of the structure and composition of the nebula's gas and dust from these images. The most active regions in the image show sparking young stars in pale blue, while there are also embedded red stars. Webb has also viewed this image from a different perspective using Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), focusing more on dust and glowing gas and showing an abundance of hydrocarbon light in blue and purple, while the hot stars fade in the background.

"Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images, the nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation," NASA said in a statement as it released the latest pictures.

Tarantula is home to some of the hottest and most massive stars known to the human race till now. This star-forming region is situated in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest to our Milky Way. Webb operates primarily in the infrared spectrum because light from objects in the distant cosmos has been stretched into this wavelength over the course of the universe's expansion. Tarantula Nebula is one of the brightest star-forming regions nearest to our Milky Way neighborhood. It is the hub of the most massive and hottest stars we have known. Another reason Tarantula Nebula has been a topic of interest is that it features a similar chemical composition as the enormous star-forming regions observed at our universe's Cosmic Noon, a theory, that talks about the history of the universe and how the formation of galaxies occurred.

The telescope's primary imager, the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), found the cavity in the center of the nebula was hollowed out by radiation carried on stellar winds emanating from a cluster of massive young stars, which appear as pale blue dots. Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which analyses light patterns to determine the composition of objects, caught one young star in the act of shedding a cloud of dust from around itself.

"However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself. Without Webb's high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation in action could not have been revealed," the space agency said.