NASA teams with engineering, 3D printing companies for moon mission →

NASA is partnering with Stratasys, PADT, and Lockheed Martin to create 100 3D printed parts for the Orion spacecraft, headed to the moon and beyond.

3D printing is quickly taking over a number of different industries, but now it will make its way to space, joining astronauts on NASA's upcoming Orion deep-space spacecraft, which will go to the moon.

NASA will work with Stratasys, Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies (PADT), and Lockheed Martin Space to bring vital 3D printed parts to the spacecraft. Stratasys is providing the materials that will be used in the printer, namely their new Antero 800NA, a thermoplastic that that the company said "is ideally suited to meet NASA's requirements for heat and chemical resistance, along with the ability to withstand high mechanical loads."

The Orion spacecraft is slated to hold a test flight later this year, which will send an unmanned ship to the moon and beyond during a three-week. The spacecraft may also visit Mars, according to Stratasys.

"The following flight, EM-2, will also go near the Moon, but with astronauts on-board, a first since 1972 and will enable NASA to prepare for increasingly complex missions in deep space," according to a press release.

NASA plans to use more than 100 3D printed production parts on board—all of which will be engineered in cooperation with Lockheed Martin, Stratasys, and PADT.

"The demands of space travel require extremely high performance materials and the most rigorous manufacturing processes in the industry. Part integrity and repeatability are essential and must pass NASA's demanding testing and validation process," Scott Sevcik, vice president of manufacturing at Stratasys, said in the release.

Lockheed Martin Space said they hoped 3D printing would allow them to streamline the spaceship construction process, making it more quick and cost effective. They have already tested the feasibility of 3D-printed parts, and said they believe the technology will allow them, and other companies, the opportunity to mass-produce parts for future space travel.

"It's exciting to be a part of the Orion mission and Lockheed Martin's efforts to transition additive manufacturing from prototyping to production," Rey Chu, principal and co-owner of PADT, said in the release. "Additive manufacturing technology and materials have come a long way to become a full-fledged end-use manufacturing option."

Stratasys has been able to spread the use of 3D printing technology in the enterprise through partnerships in the fields of prosthetics, sports, and healthcare, helping companies print everything from bobsleds to functional models of human hearts and bones.

*featured on TechRepublic.com on April 17, 2018: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/nasa-teams-with-engineering-3d-printing-companies-for-moon-mission/

Could Facebook's data debacle force more companies to act like Apple on privacy? →

Apple CEO Tim Cook called on Congress to create tougher measures protecting people's data and privacy.

At a recent forum in Beijing, Apple CEO Tim Cook called on US legislators to address digital privacy issues, highlighting the need for corporations to let their customers know how, when, and why their data is being used.

"The ability of anyone to know what you've been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life—from my own point of view, it shouldn't exist," he told the crowd at the annual China Development Forum on Saturday.

Cook later added: "I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary."

Facebook is reeling from revelations aired last week that the company had been allowing third-party app makers, developers, and others widespread access to significant amounts of their data. Many users have complained that they were not aware of Facebook's use of their personal data, 'like' history, and other profile features.

The news has prompted a growing #DeleteFacebook movement, wreaking havoc on Facebook's stock market position and forcing CEO Mark Zuckerberg to release multiple apologies, even acquiescing to possible legislation by Congress.

"We've worried for a number of years that people in many countries were giving up data probably without knowing fully what they were doing and that these detailed profiles that were being built of them, that one day something would occur and people would be incredibly offended by what had been done without them being aware of it," Cook said, according to Bloomberg. "Unfortunately that prediction has come true more than once."

British news outlet Channel 4 released a series of videos and stories last weekillustrating how political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used over 50 million American Facebook profiles to craft and bombard people with hyper-specific political messaging, some of which they openly admitted was propaganda and false information.

Both US and EU lawmakers are scrutinizing Cambridge Analytica's actions as well as Facebook's privacy policies concerning how they store and market access to people's data.

In an attempt to address this very issue, the EU passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of rules designed specifically to protect data collected by any company that does business in any EU nation. The 2016 legislation comes into effect on May 25, and companies are scrambling to comply with it.

"Under the GDPR, before processing any personal data, a business must ask for explicit permission from the subject. The request must use clear language. The provisions of the regulation specifically outlaw the use of long documents filled with legalese, so hiding permissions within a tome called Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy will not suffice," according to Tech Republic. "The consent must be given for a specific purpose and must be requested separately from other documents and policy statements."

Cook's predecessor, Steve Jobs, called on companies in 2010 to do many of the things listed in the GDPR themselves, warning of privacy issues that may crop up in the future.

"Privacy means people know what they're signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly," Jobs said in a speech, according to TechCrunch. "I'm an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do with their data."

*this article was featured on the Tech Republic website on March 26, 2018: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/could-facebooks-data-debacle-force-more-companies-to-act-like-apple-on-privacy/

Report: Cryptojacking exploded 8,500% in 2017 as Bitcoin gained value →

Security provider Symantec said that nearly a quarter of the attacks it blocked in December 2017 were related to cryptojacking.

The rise in value and popularity of Bitcoin at the end of 2017 corresponded with a massive spike in blocked cryptojacking attempts, according to cybersecurity software firm Symantec.

In their report on the cybersecurity threat landscape in 2017, Symantec found that the number of attempted cryptojackings—wherein someone attempts to hijack your computing device to mine for cryptocurrency—skyrocketed by 8,500% in the last three months of 2017.

"Cyber criminals use coinminers to steal victims' computer processing power and cloud CPU usage to mine cryptocurrencies," Symantec wrote in their report. "Cyber criminals started trying to make money this way primarily because there was a huge rise in the value of cryptocurrencies in the last quarter of 2017, making this type of cyber crime extremely profitable."

Mining for cryptocurrencies requires a significant amount of processing power and ancillary costs that can be too expensive for the average person, prompting many hackers and cybercriminals to create coinminers that can hijack someone else's computer, often without their knowledge.

These coinminers bleed your computer's energy dry, slow down your computer and can cause the batteries in your device to break down. For large companies or corporations, the discovery of a coinminer in your system may result in massive CPU costs and require network shutdowns to remedy.

Sweden, which is attempting to become the first country with its own cryptocurrency, saw a 10,000% jump in cryptojacking attempts at the end of 2017, according to the TheLocal.se.

Another security firm, Check Point, said in January that it too had found a massive increase in cryptomining malware. The research found that "the tools can be hacked to dominate more power and generate more revenue, using as much as 65% of the end-users' CPU power," according to a report.

Kaspersky Lab's Yaroslava Ryabova noted that "Over the past six months, cybercriminals have raked in more than $7 million through injecting cryptominers."

Just last month, Tesla was forced to address this issue after a security firm found that their cloud environment was being used by hackers to mine cryptocurrency. The same security company, Redlock, found coinminers using the cloud at two other companies in October.

"The message from this research is loud and clear — the unmistakable potential of cloud environments is seriously compromised by sophisticated hackers identifying easy-to-exploit vulnerabilities," Redlock's CTO and head of the CSI team, Gaurav Kumar, said in a statement to Finance Magnates.

In its report, Symantec also noted that while most coinmining apps are used to hijack computers or phones, some have started to attack IoT (Internet of Things) devices as well.

"We observed a 600 percent increase in overall attacks on IoT devices in 2017, showing that while they didn't make headlines like they did thanks to the Mirai botnet in 2016, they are still very much a target for cyber criminals," Symantec said in the report.

The numbers will only rise as more criminals look to use the processing power of other devices to mine for more cryptocurrency, Symantec's director of security response Kevin Haley told The Verge.

"While a great portion of these threats are browser-based, hijacking PCs, Macs and smartphones, attackers are moving to obtain more processing power to drive greater profit," he said.

*this article was featured on the Tech Republic website on March 23, 2018: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/report-cryptojacking-exploded-8500-in-2017-as-bitcoin-gained-value/