Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection uses cloud power to figure out you’ve been pwned

WDATP can detect anomalous behavior even when the malware scanner doesn't find anything wrong. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is beefing up Windows Defender, the anti-malware program that ships with Windows 10, to give it the power to tell companies that they've been hacked after it has happened.

Attacks that depend on social engineering rather than software flaws, as well as those taking advantage of unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities, can evade traditional anti-malware software. Microsoft says that there were thousands of such attacks in 2015, and that on average they took 200 days to detect, and a further 80 days to contain, giving attackers ample time to steal data, and incurring average costs of $12 million per incident. The catchily named Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is designed to detect this kind of attack, not by looking for specific pieces of malware, but rather by detecting system activity that looks out of the ordinary.

For example, a social engineering attack might encourage a victim to run a program that was attached to an e-mail, or execute a suspicious looking PowerShell command. The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) software that's typically used in such attacks may scan ports, connect to network shares to look for data to steal, or to remote systems to seek new instructions and exfiltrate data. Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection can monitor this behavior and see how it deviates from normal, expected system behavior. The baseline is the aggregate behavior collected anonymously from more than 1 billion Windows systems. If systems on your network start doing something that the "average Windows machine" doesn't, WDATP will alert you.

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Very Pretty Gimbal With Long Feature List

What can you do when you have a nice CNC machine, but build beautiful things like this 3-axis gimbal? We covered some of [Gal]’s work before, and he does not subscribe to the idea that hacks should look like hacks. If you’re going to spend hours and hours on something, why not make it better looking than anything you could buy off-the-shelf.

The camera is held stationary with three hollow shaft gimbal motors with low cogging. We weren’t aware of hollow shaft motors, but can think of lots of sensor mounts where such a motor could be used to make very compact and smooth sensor mounts instead of the usual hobby servo configuration. The brains are an off-the-shelf gimbal controller. The gimbal has a DB9 port at the back which handles charging of the internal LiPo batteries as well as giving him a place to input R/C signals for manual control.

The case is made from CNC’d wood and aluminum. There are lots of nice touches. For example, he added two buttons so he could fine tune the pitch of the gimbal. Each button is individually engraved with an up/down arrow.

[Gal] reverse engineered the connector on Garmin action camera he’s using so he can keep it powered, stream video, or add an external mic. Next he built a custom 5.8Ghz video transmitter based on a Boscam module. The transmitter connects to the DB9 charging port on the gimbal.

It’s very cool when someone builds something for themselves that’s far beyond anything they could buy. A few videos of it in operation after the break.

Filed under: drone hacks

Fake Window Brings Natural Light Into Basement

Do you have a depressing basement? Maybe you still live with the parents? You need a fake window to cheer things up! As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to make a convincingly real-looking day-light window — plus you could totally mess with your circadian rhythm!

[thatdbeagoodbandname] has an office in his basement with no windows, which is why he set out to brighten up the room with this project. Apparently you can buy fake LED windows, but they’re expensive and don’t look that good. His goal was to build a cartoony “classic” window that would feel bright and uplifting — and to keep it well under $200.

In the end he ended up buying everything he needed from Home Depot for his project; some 2 x 4’s for the frame, a sheet of acrylic, and a set of LED plant grow-lights.

From there it was pretty simple to assemble, and as you can see, it looks pretty realistic. An extension to this project could use RGB LEDs in order to make fake sunrises and sunsets, and change the light depending on the season!

Or you can go all out and build a miniature sun in your room to make sure you wake up…

[via r/DIY]

Filed under: led hacks

Russian crowdfunded reflector satellite aims to be “brightest star in the sky”

(credit: Mayak project)

A group of engineers and space enthusiasts from Moscow University of Mechanical Engineering have hit the goal for a crowdfunding project that may change the night sky for a while. The team's "Mayak" (Beacon) satellite project has raised enough money to launch what amounts to an orbital night-light into orbit—a solar-synchronized satellite that will deploy a 16-square-meter tetrahedron-shaped reflector. The reflector will bounce back the sun's rays at the Earth as it orbits, making it brighter than any star in the night sky.

The team behind Mayak (which translates as "Beacon") has raised 1.72 million rubles ($23,000) on the Russian crowdfunding site Boomstarter (which looks suspiciously like Kickstarter). According to the group's page, the Russian space launch company Roscosmos has "Confirmed the possibility of (Mayak) being added to a launch on a Soyuz-2 rocket in the middle of 2016." The scheduled launch is also carrying the Canopus-B-IR satellite, an earth observation satellite for monitoring forest fires.

Like most crowdfunding efforts, this one comes with a mobile app, which will give users the location of the satellite at any time. And it has stretch goals as well—the next goal is to fund construction of a model of Mayak for Moscow's Museum of Cosmonautics. After that, the team hopes to construct an experimental atmospheric braking system that would help Mayak (and potentially other future satellites) re-enter the atmosphere and be recovered without the use of retro-rockets.

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Pharma’s drug hikes doubled average cost of prescriptions in last decade

(credit: Eric Hunsaker)

Trips to the pharmacy are getting more and more expensive. From 2006 to 2013, the average retail cost of a year’s supply of 622 common prescriptions doubled—from about $5,500 to more than $11,000—according to a new report from AARP, a senior citizen advocacy group.

The rising costs are likely to hit senior citizens hardest, the AARP cautioned, noting that the 2013 average cost would come out to about 75 percent of the average Social Security retirement benefit, which is $15,526.

“If these trends continue, more and more Americans will simply be unable to afford the medications that they need to get and stay healthy,” Debra Whitman, AARP’s Chief Public Policy Officer, said in a statement.

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Design Analysis: Core XY vs H-Bot

Hackaday writer [Joshua Vasquez] wrote about the mechanical difference between the Core-XY and H-Bot movements commonly used in 3D printers on his personal website. There are so many things a beginning mechanical designer can overlook when setting out to make a movement. Sometimes,in the case of these movements, they aren’t readily apparent, and like finding a troublesome pattern in code; have to be shown before the mind picks them up in future designs.

[Joshua] starts by describing how each movement works. At first glance, the H-Bot movement seems simpler and more effective than the Core-XY.  The Core-XY uses more belting, and some of the pulleys are out of plane with each other. However, this is done to eliminate a moment put on the frame in the H-Bot design. This moment can throw off the accuracy of the movement in unpredictable ways.

The Core-XY movement is one of our favorites. It keeps the motors stationary. It’s compact, precise, repeatable, and linear. It’s good to understand the mechanical reasons for this. Just like learning the SQL database calls a library has been obfuscating for you lets you write better code.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks

Apple prevails in forced iPhone unlock case in New York court

(credit: Kārlis Dambrāns)

A judge in New York ruled Monday in favor of Apple in a case where investigators wanted the court to compel the company to unlock a seized iPhone 5S running iOS 7, which the company does have the ability to unlock.

This case involves a drug dealer who has already pleaded guilty. It pre-dates Apple's current battle with the government over a locked iPhone 5C that belonged to one of the shooters in the December 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino—that case is due to be heard in court next month in nearby Riverside, California.

However, in both the San Bernardino and the New York cases, Apple fought the government's attempt to use the same law, known as the All Writs Act—an obscure catchall statute that dates back to the 18th Century. There are several related AWA cases involving unlocking Apple devices that remain pending nationwide.

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