Lifeboat Foundation

These attacks were perpetrated by a newly discovered Iranian state sponsored threat group — dubbed MalKamak — that has been operating under the radar since at least 2018.

This operation has been ongoing for years, continuously evolving its malware year after year, while successfully evading most security tools. The authors of ShellClient invested a lot of effort into making it stealthy to evade detection by antivirus and other security tools by leveraging multiple obfuscation techniques and recently implementing a Dropbox client for command and control (C2), making it very hard to detect. By studying the ShellClient development cycles, Cybereason researchers were able to observe how ShellClient has morphed over time from a rather simple reverse shell to a sophisticated RAT used to facilitate cyber espionage operations.

The most recent ShellClient versions observed in Operation GhostShell follow the trend of abusing cloud-based storage services — in this case, the popular Dropbox service. The ShellClient authors used Dropbox to exfiltrate the stolen data and send commands to the malware. Threat actors have increasingly adopted this tactic due to its simplicity and the ability to effectively blend in with legitimate network traffic. Ultimately, this discovery tells researchers a lot about the tactics that advanced attackers are using to defeat security solutions.

In drought-parched California, some residents are turning to pricey machines that developers say can produce hundreds of gallons of water a day, literally out of thin air.

BENICIA, Calif. (AP) — The machine Ted Bowman helped design can make water out of the air, and in parched California, some homeowners are already buying the pricey devices.

The air-to-water systems work like air conditioners by using coils to chill air, then collect water drops in a basin.

Continue reading “In dry California, some buy units that make water from air” »

The largest projects started in 2,013 when the US government and the European Commission launched ‘moonshot’ efforts to provide services to researchers that will help to crack the mammalian brain’s code. They each poured vast resources into large-scale systematic programmes with different goals. The US effort — which is estimated to cost US$6.6 billion up until 2027 — has focused on developing and applying new mapping technologies in its BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative (see ‘Big brain budgets’). The European Commission and its partner organizations have spent €607 million ($703 million) on the Human Brain Project (HBP), which is aimed mainly at creating simulations of the brain’s circuitry and using those models as a platform for experiments.

Scientists around the world are working together to catalogue and map cells in the brain. What have these huge projects revealed about how it works?

Artificial intelligence is often thought of as disembodied: a mind like a program, floating in a digital void. But human minds are deeply intertwined with our bodies — and an experiment with virtual creatures performing tasks in simulated environments suggests that AI may benefit from having a mind-body setup.

Stanford scientists were curious about the physical-mental interplay in our own evolution from blobs to tool-using apes. Could it be that the brain is influenced by the capabilities of the body and vice versa? It has been suggested before — over a century ago, in fact — and certainly it’s obvious that with a grasping hand one learns more quickly to manipulate objects than with a less differentiated appendage.

Continue reading “Simulated AI creatures demonstrate how mind and body evolve and succeed together” »

Kitco News’ general-interest stories takes a look at what is making headlines in the marketplace and how that is impacting precious metals prices.

When it surfaced two months ago, the notion of Teslas whizzing through underground tunnels between San Antonio International Airport and downtown seemed fanciful.

Now, there’s a sign the idea may have gained some traction.

The Boring Co., a tunneling firm backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has been talking to local leaders about building an underground transportation loop in San Antonio. Musk is the CEO of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, as well as the founder and CEO of SpaceX.

Two of the galaxies they searched in had some unusual activity.

A team of astronomers are searching for Type III alien civilization among the galaxies, the most advanced type of extraterrestrial life.

Conversational video technology enables AI-powered back-and-forth between viewers and prerecorded responses.

University of Kentucky College of Medicine researchers were part of a new study that gives insight into how limb development evolved in vertebrates.

The findings, published in Current Biology Oct. 4 identify a gene that plays a central role in the evolution of limb development in vertebrates. By manipulating this gene in mice, researchers were able to activate an ancestral form of limb development seen in early tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates).

In the limbs of all tetrapods, the bones on the hands and feet on the outside edge form first, known as postaxial development. The study focuses on salamanders, which are the only exception to this rule: their limb bones develop preaxially, or from the inside edge; the thumb before pinky.