US Rep Jason Crow, of the US House Intelligence Committee, warned that bio-weapons are being made that use a target’s DNA to only kill that person at a security forum on Friday.
Counter-drone systems typically attack a UAV’s radio control or GPS systems, disabling pilot control as well as pre-programmed missions. But British defense tech company QinetiQ has now demonstrated a laser-controlled drone these systems can’t stop.
Microsoft has chosen to add specific security measures against brute force attacks against RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). These security improvements have been introduced in the most recent builds of Windows 11. Given the evolution of this type of attack abusing RDP, Microsoft decided to add the security measure in the latest Insider Preview22528.1000. This system automatically locks accounts for 10 minutes after 10 invalid login attempts. The news was broken by David Weston (VP of OS & Enterprise Security) on Twitter last week.
These kinds of attacks against RDP are quite common in human operated ransomware. With this relatively simple measure, it is possible to complicate brute force attacks, being quite effective in discouraging them. However, it was already possible to activate this measure in Windows 10, so the novelty is really enabling it by default.
On the other hand, it is expected that, as happened with the blocking of VBA macros for Office documents, it will also be implemented for previous versions of Windows and Windows Server. Aside from malicious macros, brute force RDP access has long been one of the most popular methods used in cyberattacks. This strategy was successful in gaining initial unauthorized access to Windows systems. Among other ransomware, LockBit, Conti, Hive, PYSA, Crysis, SamSam, and Dharma are known to rely on these types of attacks to gain initial access to victims’ computers.
A new batch of malicious Android apps filled with adware and malware was found on the Google Play Store that have been installed close to 10 million times on mobile devices.
The apps pose as image-editing tools, virtual keyboards, system optimizers, wallpaper changers, and more. However, their underlying functionality is to push intrusive ads, subscribe users to premium services, and steal victims’ social media accounts.
The discovery of these malicious apps comes from the Dr. Web antivirus team, who highlighted the new threats in a report published today.
New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York offers a second life for CDs: Turn them into flexible biosensors that are inexpensive and easy to manufacture.
In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, Matthew Brown, Ph.D. ‘22, and Assistant Professor Ahyeon Koh from the Department of Biomedical Engineering show how a gold CD’s thin metallic layer can be separated from the rigid plastic and fashioned into sensors to monitor electrical activity in human hearts and muscles as well as lactate, glucose, pH and oxygen levels. The sensors can communicate with a smartphone via Bluetooth.
The fabrication is completed in 20 to 30 minutes without releasing toxic chemicals or needing expensive equipment, and it costs about $1.50 per device. According to the paper, “this sustainable approach for upcycling electronic waste provides an advantageous research-based waste stream that does not require cutting-edge microfabrication facilities, expensive materials or high-caliber engineering skills.”
DataHour: Computer Vision Landscape
Posted in computing
With our brand new documentary premiering at #SIGGRAPH 2022, you’ll get to take a look behind the scenes of the 2022 Spring GTC and discover how NVIDIA’s creative, engineering, and research teams pushed the limits of NVIDIA GPUs, AI, USD, and @NVIDIA Omniverse to deliver our most watched GTC ever.
Global Documentary Premiere: Wednesday, August 10, at 10:00 a.m. PT
Add the event to your calendar: https://nvda.ws/3z9kltq
Energy, mass, velocity. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing so could greatly accelerate scientific discovery.
This is the question that researchers at Columbia Engineering posed to a new AI program. The program was designed to observe physical phenomena through a video camera, then try to search for the minimal set of fundamental variables that fully describe the observed dynamics. The study was published on July 25 in Nature Computational Science.
The researchers began by feeding the system raw video footage of phenomena for which they already knew the answer. For example, they fed a video of a swinging double pendulum known to have exactly four “state variables”—the angle and angular velocity of each of the two arms. After a few hours of analysis, the AI produced the answer: 4.7.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, studying the molecular landscape of over 500 patients with an aggressive form of multiple myeloma, discovered a prevalence of activated key oncogenic pathways in these patients, much more than previously thought. Upwards of 45–65% of NF-κB and RAS/MAPK pathways each had alterations. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Further, Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, and his team found a link between mutations and RASopathies, a certain group of genetic syndromes, in patients with relapsed treatment-resistant multiple myeloma. This was the first observation of its kind.
The team compared the molecular makeup of patients with untreated multiple myeloma to those with the relapsed treatment-resistant version of the disease. Comparing these patients allowed researchers to describe drivers of the more aggressive form of multiple myeloma.
University of Iowa researchers have confirmed in a new study that a specific region in the brain is critical to governing the mind’s communication with the body’s motor control system. The findings could yield advances in treatment for Parkinson’s disease, as declining motor coordination is a central symptom of the disorder.
In experiments with humans, the researchers pinpointed the subthalamic nucleus as the region in the brain that communicates with the motor system to help the body stop an action. This communication is vital because it helps humans avoid surprises and react to potentially dangerous or unforeseen circumstances.
The subthalamic nucleus is a tiny grouping of cells that is part of the basal ganglia, which is a key circuit in controlling movement. The basal ganglia takes initial motor commands generated in the brain and either amplify or halt specific parts of those commands as they pass from the central nervous system to the spinal cord.