Month: November 2021

Enlarge / Russian national Yevgyeniy Polyanin remains at large. (credit: FBI)

US authorities have brought criminal charges against a Ukrainian and a Russian national for their roles in high-profile ransomware attacks as part of a sprawling global crackdown on digital extortion groups.

The US justice department on Monday said it had charged Ukrainian Yaroslav Vasinskyi, 22, for allegedly conducting one of the largest global supply chain ransomware attacks, the Kaseya hack, among others. The US said it is seeking to extradite Vasinskyi, who was arrested in Poland after crossing the border from Ukraine, Merrick Garland, attorney general, said.

The sprawling hack in July hit information technology management software supplier Kaseya and an estimated 1,500 of its clients and clients’ clients. The attack forced Swedish supermarket chain Coop to close nearly all of its 800 stores.

Enlarge / Logitech Pop Mouse. (credit: Scharon Harding)

There are many reasons to prefer wireless mice. They keep your desk clear of unnecessary cords, and it's now easy to find one with advanced capabilities, a nice set of programmable buttons, and the ability to hold a reliable connection. Some people use a wireless mouse to control a distant system—like a media PC, for example—and are interested in mice that not only cut the cord but the volume as well.

The Logitech Pop Mouse is aimed at that latter crowd. But before you notice its absence of cable and ability to easily toggle across three devices paired with Bluetooth, you'll see the daring color options that scream "vibrant" in all their plastic glory.

Priced at $40, the Pop Mouse also boasts an "emoji button" directly under the scroll wheel, pushing the device toward a young demographic. But that emoji button is programmable, so the Pop Mouse can still be a viable option for advanced users looking for a secondary or travel mouse. Just don't rely on this diminutive, flatter, more limited mouse for your next big Photoshop project.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image using its navigation camera during its thin-atmosphere flight this week. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Nearly seven months have passed since NASA's Ingenuity helicopter made its first groundbreaking flight on Mars.

Since that initial tentative hovering above the surface of Mars, Ingenuity has flown a progression of longer, more significant, and scientifically important flights. It has flown as far as 625 meters in a single flight, as high as 12 meters, and for a duration of as long as 169.5 seconds.

But in September the small flying vehicle faced a growing threat from a thinning atmosphere due to seasonal variation. NASA's Perseverance mission had landed in Jezero Crater, in the northern hemisphere of Mars, during the planet's late winter in February. But since then summer has come on, and the density of Mars' atmosphere has fallen from about 1.5 percent that of Earth's atmosphere to 1.0 percent. For a helicopter already pushing the limits of flying in a thin atmosphere, this represented a significant decline.