Security researchers found a new service called Dark Utilities that provides an easy and inexpensive way for cybercriminals to set up a command and control (C2) center for their malicious operations.
The Dark Utilities service provides threat actors a platform that supports Windows, Linux, and Python-based payloads, and eliminates the effort associated with implementing a C2 communication channel.
A C2 server is how adversaries control their malware in the wild, sending out commands, configurations and new payloads, and receiving data collected from compromised systems.
Companies specializing in cutting-edge construction techniques are aiming to make a difference by churning out high-quality homes at a lower cost than traditional industry standards. Among these are 3D printed homes, “foldable” homes, and homes that ship in kits then are assembled like Ikea furniture.
Now a new player is joining the list, and it just got a serious financial boost. Vantem Global has already helped construct a total of over three million square feet of living space in six different countries, and earlier this month closed a Series A funding round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies).
Vantem’s energy-efficient prefabricated homes are made of structural panels. The panels were designed as a replacement for brick and cement, which are expensive, difficult to make, and heavy on emissions. Each panel consists of an insulating layer sandwiched by tiles made of a cement-like material. Since the panels are more similar to cement than wood or plastic are, they’re more likely to be positively perceived by customers who are used to cement (as many in Latin America are, where Vantem has thus far focused most of its construction).
Tiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.
Perovskites are exciting semiconductors for light-harvesting applications and have already shown some impressive performances in solar cells. But improvements in photo-conversion efficiency are necessary to take this technology to a broader market.
Light comes in packets of energy known as photons. When a semiconductor absorbs a photon, the electromagnetic energy is transferred to a negatively charged electron and its positively charged counterpart, known as a hole. An electric field can sweep these particles in opposite directions, thereby allowing a current to flow. This is the basic operation of a solar cell. It might sound simple, but optimizing the quantum efficiency, or getting as many electron-hole pairs from the incoming photons as possible, has been a long-standing goal.
