“This is the most advanced arm in the world,” Johnny Matheny, who lost his left arm to cancer in 2008 and demonstrated the robotic arm for DARPA, said in a statement. “This one can do anything your natural arm can do, with the exception of the Vulcan V. But unless I meet a Vulcan, I won’t need it.”

Matheny showed the arm during Demo Day for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s research unit, which was held Wednesday at the Pentagon. The device was developed at the Research and Exploratory Development Department at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The robotic arm is attached to a piece of metal that is surgically implanted into the bone of the user’s arm in technique called osseointegration. Matheny is the first person in the U.S. to have undergone the procedure, according to the U.S. Army.

The Army called the system a “true man/machine interface.”

The mind-controlled aspect of the arm comes into play via the nerves and muscles in what remains of the user’s arm. Those tissues send signals to the robotic arm, which responds to them as a real arm would.

“This is part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, where we set out to restore near-natural upper extremity control to our military service members who have lost limbs in service of our country,” said Dr. Justin C. Sanchez, director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA, in a statement. “The goal is to control the arm as naturally as possible.”

The robotic arm, according to Sanchez, has the same size, weight, shape and grip strength as an adult biological arm.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/darpa-shows-off-mind-controlled-robotic-arm.html

On April 30, the House’s Technology Service Desk informed users about an increase in ransomware-related emails on third-party email services like Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

“The House Information Security Office is taking a number of steps to address this specific attack,” the Technology Service Desk said in an email obtained and published by Gizmodo. “As part of that effort, we will be blocking access to Yahoo Mail on the House Network until further notice.”

The ban on Yahoo Mail access suggests that some House of Representatives workers accessed Yahoo mailboxes from their work computers. This raises questions: Are House workers using Yahoo Mail for official business, and, if they’re not, are they allowed to check their private email accounts on work devices?

If they use the same devices for both personal and work activities, one would hope that there are access controls in place to separate the work and personal data. Otherwise, if they are allowed to take those devices outside of the House’s network, they could just as easily become infected there, where the ban is not in effect.

“The recent attacks have focused on using .js files attached as ZIP files to e-mail that appear to come from known senders,” the House’s Technology Service Desk said. “The primary focus appears to be through Yahoo Mail at this time.”

The increase in ZIP and RAR attachments that contain malicious JavaScript (JS) files has been observed by multiple security companies in recent months. Microsoft offers several recommendations, like using the Windows AppLocker group policy to restrict the execution of .JS files.

The House Information Security Office also banned access to appspot.com, the domain name used by applications hosted on the Google App Engine platform, Reuters reported.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/u-s-house-of-representatives-block-yahoo-and-google-apps.html