Good Morning! Oracle Health just got hit with a pretty bad data breach involving patient records and some extremely sketchy “don’t email us” vibes. Meanwhile, DOGE wants to rewrite Social Security’s COBOL code in months (gulp), and OpenWorm is still trying to make one tiny digital worm wiggle—and honestly, it's way harder than it sounds.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

Oracle’s Health Data Breach: The Breach Heard 'Round the Cloud

So here’s the deal: Oracle Health (née Cerner) got hit. Hard. A threat actor—who goes by “Andrew” and apparently skipped the whole “working in a team” thing—exfiltrated patient data from legacy servers that hadn’t yet made the leap to Oracle’s cloud. This all went down post-January 22, with Oracle catching wind around February 20.

It’s messy. We’re talking potentially multiple US hospitals, compromised EHRs, and extortion demands in crypto. Oracle’s stance? They’re not alerting patients—that’s up to the hospitals. Oh, and no public disclosure yet either. Communications? Not even on official letterhead. Just plain paper and a “call us, don’t email” directive.

The breach hasn’t just sparked panic—it’s raising some red flags across infosec circles. The access vector? Compromised customer credentials (still unclear how that enabled access to multiple orgs). The aftermath?

• Oracle won’t notify patients directly, but they’ll “support” with templates.

• They’re covering credit monitoring, but not handling mailings.

• Hospitals are scrambling with limited guidance—mostly via phone calls.

And just to spice things up, this comes on the heels of an alleged breach of Oracle Cloud’s federated SSO system, with 6M user records reportedly lifted.

TL;DR: Legacy servers, stolen creds, vague guidance, and a one-man ransomware show. If your org is still running sensitive ops on non-cloud infra—this is your blinking neon sign to move. Yesterday.

COBOL’s Last Stand? DOGE Thinks SSA Can Reboot in Months.

Context: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name that sounds like it came from a crypto meme but unfortunately holds real power—is now eyeing a “total rewrite” of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) codebase. The catch? They want to do it in months. The SSA, for context, runs on millions (yes, millions) of lines of good ol’ COBOL. We’re talking 1960s mainframe magic still holding up the benefits system for ~70 million Americans.

COBOL may be ancient, but it’s stable. Migrating it? That’s like rebuilding a 747 mid-flight. DOGE seems ready to wing it.

DOGE is assembling a task force to modernize the SSA stack ASAP. Why are some experts terrified? Here’s why:

• The SSA system has been refined over decades, with layers of logic no one fully understands anymore.

• Even a well-paced rewrite would take years and still risk serious bugs.

• DOGE has a habit of axing veteran tech staff (the folks who do know COBOL).

The Worm That Outsmarts Us All

Context: OpenWorm is the kind of open source project that sounds like a side quest in a sci-fi RPG: simulate all of a C. elegans worm—down to the molecules. It started in 2011 with one humble goal: create a digital twin of the most studied animal in biology. Just 302 neurons, right? Should be easy. Except… it’s been 13 years and we still can’t make the little guy squirm properly.

Turns out, biology’s messier than a JavaScript dependency tree.

What’s New: With better tools, data, and compute, OpenWorm’s dream is suddenly less wormhole and more roadmap. Scientists have a new plan: activate each neuron in the worm’s brain one at a time and watch how the rest react. Then feed that mountain of data into simulation models.

Why this matters (and is still very cool):

• This is the smallest brain we sort of understand, yet can’t fully replicate

• Simulating 5 seconds of worm motion = 10 hours of compute

• If we can't do this, good luck simulating a mouse, let alone a human

So yeah, building a fully synthetic worm isn’t about replacing it—it’s about understanding life by trying (and failing) to recreate it. It’s science’s nerdiest moonshot, and it’s quietly teaching us more than any flashy AI model.

Also: If someone runs you in a worm matrix on their Mac, try not to freak out. Elon already liked the tweet.

🔥 More Notes

• China's Humanoid Robot Revolution: China is making significant strides in developing humanoid robots, aiming to lead the world by 2027. Engineers at UBTech are training these AI-powered robots to work alongside humans in factories, potentially revolutionizing labor-intensive industries.

• Hyundai's Security Hiccup: Hyundai faces legal action over claims that its Ioniq 5 electric car can be stolen in under 20 seconds using a device that mimics the car's electronic key. This raises concerns about vehicle security in the era of electronic vulnerabilities.

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