Lifeboat Foundation

Fighting ransomware with bounties.

In May, a ransomware attack shut down a pipeline carrying 45 percent of the fuel used on the US East Coast. The Colonial Pipeline incident led to panic buying and heightened fears about the threat posed by simple hacks to national infrastructure. Now, the US State Department is offering a bounty of up to $10 million to anyone who can supply the “identity or location” of the leaders of the group responsible — an outfit known as DarkSide.

In addition to the $10 million bounty, the state department is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction “of any individual conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident.” What exactly that means isn’t clear. Is a “DarkSide variant ransomware incident” one that involves the group’s hacking tools? What if the software has been altered slightly? It seems deliberately ambiguous, allowing the State Department to cast as wide a net as possible.

Continue reading “US government offers $10 million bounty for information on Colonial Pipeline hackers” »

Glass tables, glass desks, and even glass kitchen counters could one day be completely free of wires.

One of the largest weaknesses of the U.S. military is its dependence on fuel. During the Global War on Terror, fuel convoys were easy targets for insurgent attacks. They will likely be targeted in future conflicts as well. This supply chain vulnerability is critical since, without access to fuel, military aircraft cannot maintain air superiority, a major requirement for winning wars.

Last week, the Air Force Operational Energy office awarded a contract to the energy company Twelve to develop the technology necessary to produce jet fuel from air. While this may sound unrealistic, the process is actually fairly straightforward. Indeed, Twelve has already shown that this process can be done at small levels. However, there are significant challenges involved in using this process at scale.

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New solar solution allows for extended off-grid camping without the need for gas-powered generators.

An attack attempt in 2020 proves the UAS threat is real—and not enough is being done to stop it.

Today marks the official retail availability of Intel’s 12^th Generation Core processors, starting with the overclockable versions this side of the New Year, and the rest in 2022. These new processors are the first widescale launch of a hybrid processor design for mainstream Windows-based desktops using the underlying x86 architecture: Intel has created two types of core, a performance core and an efficiency core, to work together and provide the best of performance and low power in a singular package. This hybrid design and new platform however has a number of rocks in the river to navigate: adapting Windows 10 Windows 11 and all sorts of software to work properly, but also introduction of DDR5 at a time when DDR5 is still not widely available. There are so many potential pitfalls for this product, and we’re testing the flagship Core i9-12900K in a few key areas to see how it tackles them.

Let’s Talk Processors

Since August, Intel has been talking about the design of its 12^th Generation Core processor family, also known as Alder Lake. We’ve already detailed over 16,000 words on the topic, covering the fundamentals of each new core, how Intel has worked with Microsoft to improve Windows performance with the new design, as features like DDR5, chipsets, and overclocking. We’ll briefly cover the highlights here, but these two articles are worth the read for those that want to know.

It’s been a tumultuous 12 months for mainland China’s richest. Shifts in government policy covering the education and tech industries, along with worries about real estate debt, led to many of the country’s largest private-sector companies experiencing steep share declines. A government push to promote “common prosperity” saw tycoons and tech companies announce billions of dollars in donations to social causes.

Yet overall, China’s 100 Richest saw their collective net worth rise from last year’s list. Their total wealth increased to $1.48 trillion from $1.33 trillion a year earlier. Among the biggest gainers were those who benefited from increased sales at companies tied to green energy industries in which China is a global leader, such as lithium-ion batteries. China, the world’s largest auto market, also leads the world in EV sales. The minimum net worth to make the top 100 rose to $5.74 billion from $5.03 billion a year ago.

The second-biggest increase in wealth went to Robin Zeng, chairman of battery-maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, whose fortune increased to $50.8 billion from $20.1 billion last year. That earned him the No. 3 spot on this year’s list.

A video on possible examples of how a government can try to manipulate is populace. It may be good to be more aware of its dangers.

Chinese citizens are being told to treat the USA and the Outside world as the Enemy, they’re being prepared for war whilst we tiptoe around worrying about hurting the feelings of the Chinese government… Time to wake up.

Continue reading “China is Preparing its Citizens for War — You Should Not Ignore This!” »

Something is killing-off galaxies by preventing the birth of stars—and astronomers now think they know why.

While studying 51 galaxies in a “galaxy-cluster” called the Virgo Cluster an international team of scientists have found that molecular gas—the fuel for new stars—is being “swept away by a huge cosmic broom.”

Exactly what is preventing nearby galaxies from birthing new stars has been a long-standing mystery in astrophysics. The new paper, now available online, blames the extreme environment of the Virgo Cluster. It’s been accepted by the journal Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.