Microsoft wins court case against Russian hackers, can take over their servers

Why it matters to you

This court case demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to shutting down hackers who seek to use the company’s branding to target PC users.

Microsoft scored a major legal victory that will hopefully allow it to take better care of its users’ online safety. A group of Russian hackers called Fancy Bear has been hit with a court injunction that forbids it from using the company’s trademarks or hacking systems running Windows.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Western Virginia will enforce a permanent ban on the group’s use of malicious software or code to infect the company or its users’ systems, according to MSPowerUser. This is not just a case of hackers being given a slap on the wrist, as Microsoft is being empowered with special permissions to address the situation proactively.

Fancy Bear — otherwise known as Strontium, among other monikers — used several sites that purported themselves as official Microsoft domains, including http://www.microsoftinfo365.com and http://www.livemicrosoft.net. The company is being given legal permission to take “command and control” of these sites, in order to scrub them from the internet.

The sites were commonly used in phishing attacks that would attempt to procure the user’s personal credentials or install malicious software on their PC. By taking control of these domains, Microsoft should be able to make it much more difficult for Fancy Bear to carry out its illegal activities.

“Any time an infected computer attempts to contact a command and control server through one of the domains, it will instead be connected to a Microsoft-controlled, secure server,” explained Microsoft threat intelligence manager Jason Norton in a court filing submitted in August 2016. “While it is not possible to rule out the possibility that the Strontium defendants could use fallback mechanisms to evade the requested relief, redirecting this core subset of Strontium domains will directly disrupt current Strontium infrastructure, mitigating risk and injury to Microsoft and its customers.”

Work has already begun to get rid of these predatory sites, with more than 70 different command and control points being seized this month. However, this is a massive undertaking that will take some time to complete — Microsoft has identified thousands of domains that need to be addressed.

This is not the first time that Microsoft has had to deal with the actions of Fancy Bear. In November, the company accused the group of having taken advantage of a zero-day Flash and Windows kernel vulnerability to prey on its users.

Oh, snap! Next-gen rubber bands use graphene to make them stronger than steel

Why it matters to you

Super strong, graphene-infused rubber bands could be used for everything from packaging to next-gen wearables.

With the exception of being the projectile for some kickass rubber band guns, rubber bands aren’t really items that come up too often when you’re talking about cutting-edge tech. That could be about to change, though, courtesy of some futuristic new rubber bands that are hopefully soon to arrive on the market. Manufactured by Alliance Rubber Co., a company headquartered in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the next generation rubber bands are 200x stronger than steel — all thanks to the wonder material graphene.

“Graphene is an incredible material,” Jason Risner, director of business strategy for Alliance, told Digital Trends. “It’s essentially an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice. This unique structure gives it almost unbelievable strength, which puts even the strongest of steels to shame. It’s considered the strongest material on Earth. It is exciting to experiment with how this material interacts with rubber, and to determine exactly how this super-material could be used in our products to produce attributes never seen before in rubber elastomers.”

The bands themselves aren’t made out of graphene, but rather graphene-infused rubber. Working with researchers at the United Kingdom’s University of Sussex, Alliance is currently carrying out R&D to establish the exact perfect ratio of graphene to rubber. Figuring this out will allow for the creation of rubber bands that retain their elasticity, while gaining massive amounts of durability.

“Graphene-infused rubber bands might sound like a small niche, but there’s actually plenty of potential applications beyond the potential for ultra-durability,” Risner said. “From inexpensive medical bracelets that can sense motion, such as breathing, pulse and joint movement, to color changing bands based on time or temperature for produce packaging, to anti-static bands that protect electronics during shipping, to invisible bar coding.”

Other than working out the graphene-to-rubber ratio for the bands, another big bottleneck is the fact that graphene is not currently available in commercial quantities. However, this is a problem that a number of researchers are working hard to solve. With their help, hopefully we’re not too far away from living in a Utopian world in which rubber bands snapping on our fingers are a thing of the past.

Forget flying cars; that’s the future we want to live in!

Looking for a bargain? Check out our top 3 Amazon tech deals for Thursday

Thursday’s Amazon Gold Box deals feature the PurSteam Fabric Steamer, the Nonda Smart Car Charger , and a set of ergonomic wrist rests. Read on to browse today’s best Amazon tech deals, and score savings up to $45 and discounts as deep as 64 percent.

PurSteam Fabric Steamer

Are you tired of ironing your wrinkled shirts? Ironing can be one of the most time-consuming and altogether irritating chores out there. But if you don’t want to walk around looking like you wore your clothes to bed, something has to be done.

The PurSteam Fabric Steamer offers an alternative and steamy solution to this wrinkly dilemma.

If you’re sick of ironing and are looking for a quick and easy way to defeat those stubborn wrinkles, this little steamer is perfect for you. Pick one up today for just $25 on Amazon after a $45 discount.

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Nonda App Enabled Smart Car Charger

Do you ever forget where you parked? Whether you were in a hurry, or just parked in a large and confusing parking garage, being unable to find your car can be both embarrassing and time-consuming.

The Nonda Smart Car Charger lets you locate your car right from your smartphone.

This helpful piece of tech also includes a variety of features such as car battery monitoring, parking meter alarms, and car location share for friends and family. Grab one for $12 on Amazon after a 40 percent discount.

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Gimars Memory Foam Keyboard and Mouse Wrist Rests

Long days at a computer can be rough on more than just your spirit. Clicking, typing, and sliding a mouse around for hours at a time can be torture for your wrists day in and day out.

The Gimars Memory Foam Wrist Rests give you the relief you need right where you need it.

If you’re tired of feeling pain in your wrists, or just need a little comfort while working at your desktop computer, these foam rests are here to help. Pick up a set for just $11 on Amazon after a generous 54 percent discount.

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Looking for more great deals on tech and electronics? Check out our deals page to score some extra savings on our favorite gadgets.

This $9 Anker Solid-State Drive enclosure is crucial when upgrading your laptop

This new deal from Thrifter can help you convert your internal SSD into an external portable drive!

This Anker USB 3.0 2.5-inch enclosure case is down to $8.99 with code when you enter ANKERABA at checkout. Without an active coupon code, this enclosure’s regular street price is $12.99. This deal is an easy 30% discount off the regular price.

This enclosure is a must-have for those of your looking to upgrade your laptop with a new SSD or HDD. We’d recommend going with the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD while it’s on sale for $150. It’s one of the best performing and competitively priced SSDs currently on the market. Simply pop your new SSD in the Anker enclosure, connect it to your laptop via USB and then clone your entire system onto the new drive. Swap the internal drive with the SSD and you’ve got yourself a much more reliable and speedy laptop.

An external enclosure like this can work great with any 2.5-inch SATA HDD or SSD that will fit inside. The most obvious benefit is it can give a drive that normally sits inside a casing and requires SATA ports access through USB 3.0, which is fast and reliable and can work pretty much anywhere. The other benefit for hard drives is protection from the elements. While an SSD doesn’t need that protection as much, it can at the very least shield the SSD while you’re on the move. Other features include:

• Supports 7 & 9.5mm 2.5″ SATA-I, SATA-II, SATA-III HDD and SSD interfaces.
• Easy tool-free installation for Windows and Mac systems; supports hot-swapping.
• USB 3.0 transfer rates of up to 5Gbps, backward compatible with USB 2.0/1.1.
• Solid red LED indicates idle; flashing red LED indicates data transfer.

Use this case to create an external backup or to add USB access while you’re replacing an older drive with a new SSD.

Amazon users give it 4.4 stars based on 934 user reviews. All of Anker’s products come with an 18-month warranty.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 8 cameras: Everything you need to know!

The Galaxy Note 8 has some camera hotness, but it’s also a lot of the same. Here we break it down for you.

While the Note 8 resembles the Galaxy S8 in many ways, the camera setup is pretty different.

That’s because, for the first time on a Samsung phone, there are two cameras instead of one, which offer a number of new features that you’re going to want to know about. Interested? Let’s dive right in.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 specs

What’s the camera hardware?

Like the Galaxy S8, the main camera on the Note 8 is a 12MP sensor with an optically-stabilized f/1.7 lens with a field of view roughly 28mm. On the Note 8, Samsung is calling this primary shooter its “wide-angle camera” to differentiate it from the second sensor, as well as perhaps to convince people that it’s akin to LG’s actual wide-angle sensor, which comes standard on devices like the G6 and V20.

Instead, Samsung’s secondary sensor is also 12MP but it comes paired with an optically-stabilized f/2.4 “telephoto” lens, which is also optically-stabilized. Samsung claims that, like Apple and OnePlus, its focal distance is twice that of its main lens, but we don’t know the exact millimeter equivalent.

All this is to say that on the Note 8, you can now zoom up to 2x with no discernible loss in quality, and up to 10x with much less degradation than traditional single lens shooters.

What are the benefits of having this setup?

From the outset, we can see three advantages to having a second sensor with a zoom lens:

• You can take clearer photos of subjects further away.
• You can combine the information from both cameras to take photos with enhanced depth of field, similar to the Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus and the OnePlus 5.
• You can take a photo with both cameras at once, resulting in both standard-distance and telephoto shots from a single snap.

What is Samsung calling its Portrait Mode feature?

Live Focus is the name of Samsung’s artificial background blurring feature, often called Portrait Mode. But unlike Apple’s implementation (at least right now — it’s coming in iOS 11) is the ability to change the severity of the blur in real time, as well as after the photo is taken. That depth data is maintained with every photo, so it can be altered after the fact and saved as a new photo. Very useful.

Live Focus also provides guidance on how to take a great photo — the camera app will tell you whether you need to move forward or back a little to optimize the subject in the foreground to get the ideal depth of field.

How does the Note 8’s second sensor work with the first?

Good question. When you take a regular photo — open the camera app and just snap something quickly — the second camera isn’t being used at all. Unlike other dual camera implementations from companies like Huawei and Motorola, Samsung’s second sensor doesn’t kick in unless it’s asked to — by changing to the Live Focus feature.

There is one exception to this, though: remember when Samsung made the shutter button into a sliding zoom on the Galaxy S8? We thought it was great then, even with one camera on board, and now it’s even more useful; gesturing north while tapping the shutter key effortlessly zooms into a subject, and this time when that zoom level reaches 2x, the Note 8 seamlessly switches over to that second camera sensor — as long as there’s enough light to do so.

Why did Samsung copy Apple instead of LG or Huawei with its second sensor?

I can’t answer that question, but it’s a good one. Here’s a supposition, though: Samsung is moving the Galaxy line ever more into a lifestyle brand, and it believes that Live Focus, the keystone feature of its second sensor and telephoto lens, is a better play for a wider audience — think marketing and billboards and TV ads— over the harder-to-explain monochrome “helper” sensor of the Huawei P10 or the more niche ultra-wide angle lens of the G6.

Personally, I love LG’s decision to go with a wide-angle lens on its latest phones. It makes taking landscape photos so much more versatile, and the results are frequently outstanding. But Samsung wants you to take photos of people with the Note 8, and Live Focus, which blurs out the background, just makes portraits look so good.

Of course, there will be detractors, and that’s fine — Samsung can’t expect to win over everyone with this move. But what’s more interesting is whether it will continue to pursue this same strategy in all of its future flagships.

Right, does this mean that the Galaxy S9 will have the same style dual camera setup?

Obviously, we can only speculate, but given that Samsung refers to the standard sensor on the Note 8 as “wide-angle,” it would be a safe bet to assume that it will likely maintain this bifurcation in future phones. It would be very unlikely for Samsung to stick with a single camera setup in the upcoming Galaxy S9 series, and it would be even stranger to assume any strategic changes in the type of dual camera setup itself.

In other words, don’t expect Samsung to go from an Apple or OnePlus-style dual camera setup to something more akin to LG or Huawei.

Will optical image stabilization on the second sensor help in low light?

It should! One of the typical limitations with second camera sensors on phones has heretofore been their narrower aperture — they let in less light — which prevents high-quality low-light photos. Samsung intends to alleviate some of that — it’s still physically hampered by an f/2.4 lens — by affixing a stabilization module to the second lens, which should compensate for hand shake and let the shutter stay open longer without introducing blur.

I say should because this won’t stop moving subjects — kids, pets, cars — from blurring in lower-light situations, but it’s almost certainly going to perform better than the competition, and that’s a start.

What about the app itself?

The Samsung camera app is a lot better than it was just a couple years ago. Starting with Marshmallow, the company simplified a lot of the previously overwrought toggles, switches, and modes, and with Nougat and the Galaxy S8 it got even better.

There are still numerous ways to customize the camera app, for sure, but much of the excess has been hidden away. Samsung also lets you download additional features through the Galaxy Apps store — there’s still a dedicated Food mode, for instance — but you don’t need them to enjoy the experience.

Finally, Samsung’s manual settings, called Pro mode, are easy to use and feature lots of ways to improve your shots.

What else should I know?

The Note 8’s camera app has received another little spit shine compared to the Galaxy S8, though most things are as you remember them. Live stickers and face filters have made their return, for better or worse (mostly worse, let’s be honest), while features like Bixby Vision are still in the app.

In fact, Bixby Vision has added a new AR element that overlays map elements on the screen, so you can easily find and walk towards landmarks like restaurants, museums and other points of interest. This isn’t new — Yelp debuted something similar in its mobile app years ago — but it’s neat.

Is it worth upgrading to the Note 8 just for the camera?

Probably not. As impressive as the Live Focus feature is, there is no appreciable improvement in the quality of the photos from the primary camera over either the Galaxy S7 or the S8. This is, for all intents and purposes, the identical main camera as the one that launched earlier this year. That’s a great camera, no doubt, but it’s no longer considered the best in the business.

On the other hand, you’re getting one of the best primary cameras on the market and a fantastic, optically-stabilized secondary camera, too. To me, that’s worth the price of admission — even if admission borders on $1000.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

• Galaxy Note 8 hands-on preview
• Complete Galaxy Note 8 specs
• Galaxy Note 8 vs. Galaxy Note 5: Which should you buy?
• Which Galaxy Note 8 color should you buy?
• All Galaxy Note 8 news
• Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums

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BlackBerry KEYone in Space Black comes exclusively to AT&T in the U.S.

The all black Blackberry KEYOne will soon be available for AT&T customers.

A few months after its release, the Blackberry KEYOne was updated with slightly better internals and an all black paint job, though only intended for the India. Soon, U.S. customers will be able to purchase the device.

AT&T has announced it will begin carrying a Space Black device starting September 1. Customers will be able to pick up the cool color for $16.67 per month for 30 months, totaling $500.

While the version sold in India had a bump to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, the version sold by AT&T is just a snazzy new paint job. Like the original version, the black variant includes 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The device uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 and software based on Android 7.1.1 as the standard version.

Would you be interested in the Blackberry KEYOne Special Edition? Let us know down below!

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BlackBerry KEYone

• BlackBerry KEYone review
• KEYone vs. Priv: Battle of the BlackBerry keyboards
• BlackBerry KEYone specs
• The latest KEYone news
• Join the discussion in the forums

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Get the Sonos Playbar with a $40 Amazon gift card and 6 months of Music Unlimited

Our team at Thrifter has a great bundle for you that includes the Sonos Playbar and some Amazon goodies!

This bundle from Amazon includes a Sonos Playbar, $40 Amazon gift card, and six free months of Amazon Music Unlimited for a total of $696.95. That price is essentially just the cost of the Sonos Playbar by itself, so you’re getting the rest of that as a bonus. The Music Unlimited service costs $8 a month for Prime members, so the total cost of the free stuff here is about $88 (or $100 savings if you’re not a Prime member).

The Sonos Playbar is a great sound bar, especially if you’re interested in getting a full-blown Sonos home audio system eventually. It’s easy to set up and use (seriously, one cord for power and one for the TV and you’re good to go), works seamlessly with Sonos speakers like the Play:1, and it integrates Sonos’ digital music software. If you don’t have any other Sonos speakers for a true surround sound experience, the sound bar has virtual surround sound effects that makes it seem like you do.

The Sonos Playbar has positive reviews from both critics and users. It has 4.4 stars based on more than 970 user reviews on Amazon, 5 stars from What Hi-Fi? and 4 stars from Tom’s Guide.

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• The best Amazon sample boxes
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Best Rugged Android Phone

• Best overall
• Best MacGyver phone
• Best for phone-droppers

Best Overall

Samsung Galaxy S8 Active

See at AT&T

Right now, the Galaxy S8 Active is an AT&T exclusive. Inside, it’s packed with the same stellar components as the rest of the Galaxy S8 family, including a Snapdragon 835 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers a massive 4000mAh battery, in addition to a rugged, dust-proof, and water-resistant enclosure. Its 5.8-inch Super AMOLED display is bright enough to see in the great outdoors and sits behind a shatter-resistant protective coating that can withstand the toughest of falls.

Bottom line: The Galaxy S8 Active is what other consumer-oriented rugged smartphones should aim to be like.

One more thing: This time, we expect the AT&T exclusitivity to be temporary and the Galaxy S8 Active should be available elsewhere.

Why it’s the best

It’s basically a more robust Galaxy S8 with a better battery.

The Galaxy S8 Active is a great example of what works when a manufacturer attempts to ruggedize one of its existing smartphones. Samsung took the best parts of the Galaxy S8— its components, its camera capabilities, its other extra bits — and shoved it all into a shock-resistant case. It’s also stylish enough that it’s not a complete outlier. You don’t immediately look at this phone and go, “Well, that’s certainly not geared for me.” The idea is that anyone who wants a tougher smartphone can have it without sacrificing features and aesthetics.

Best MacGyver phone

CAT S60

See at Amazon

The Cat S60 is an unlocked, GSM-compatible smartphone with FLIR thermal imaging available at the touch of a button. CAT swears this is “the world’s most waterproof smartphone,” as it can survive depths of up to 5 meters for an entire hour—that’s 30 minutes more than any of the Galaxy S7 variants claim to last. It’s also drop-proof up to 1.8 meters and reinforced with a strengthened die cast frame, which makes it perfect for perilous environments like construction sites. However, there are some downsides, like the fact that the CAT S60 has a mere 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and it runs on a mid-range Snapdragon 617 processor—the same SoC that’s inside the HTC One A9.

Bottom line: If you’re out in the field on a daily basis and you’re with T-Mobile or AT&T, you have a choice of the CAT S60 as your badass daily driver.

One more thing: The Cat S60 will not work with Sprint, Verizon, or any of their MVNOs.

Best for phone droppers

Motorola Z2 Force

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While not in the same class of rugged as our top pick, Motorola’s ShatterShield technology means you aren’t going to be able to break the Z2 Force’s screen without gettign extreme. This smartphone features 5.5-inch Quad HD display is essentially shatterproof. It also comes with a 2,730mAh battery, a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 64GB of onboard storage with expandable memory. The Snapdragon 835 processor and baseband is LTE-A compatible and also works in over 200 other countries.

Bottom line: If you tend to drop your phone a lot, the Z2 Force’s ShatterShield screen is a worthy consideration.

One more thing: Don’t forget about the Moto Mods!

Best Overall

Samsung Galaxy S8 Active

See at AT&T

Right now, the Galaxy S8 Active is an AT&T exclusive. Inside, it’s packed with the same stellar components as the rest of the Galaxy S8 family, including a Snapdragon 835 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers a massive 4000mAh battery, in addition to a rugged, dust-proof, and water-resistant enclosure. Its 5.8-inch Super AMOLED display is bright enough to see in the great outdoors and sits behind a shatter-resistant protective coating that can withstand the toughest of falls.

Bottom line: The Galaxy S8 Active is what other consumer-oriented rugged smartphones should aim to be like.

One more thing: This time, we expect the AT&T exclusitivity to be temporary and the Galaxy S8 Active should be available elsewhere.

Grab an original Pebble smart watch (refurb) for just $18

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with an impulse purchase that will take you back a few years.

The original Pebble smartwatch made waves when it was first revealed. From the moment it hit Kickstarter there was a ton of hype around it, and people loved it once they got their hands on it. Years have passed since the initial release, and while smart watches have become more sophisticated and Pebble was bought out by Fitbit, there are still people who enjoy the simplicity that the original Pebble brings to the table.

If you’re looking to purchase a piece of smart watch history, whether to use it or to just add it to your collection, you won’t want to miss out on this offer. Right now, with the coupon code PEBBLE7 you can pick one up for just $18 from Daily Steals. These are refurbished units, and you can pick between white, black, hot pink, and red when you place your order. This is a discount of $7 off the normal selling price.

Being a refurbished unit, you may notice signs of wear and tear like scratches or dings on the watch itself. As far as performance goes, the watch should perform like new, and it does come with a 60-day warranty in case you run into any issues. While Pebble may not officially support the watch any longer, there are still developers and others interested in keeping it alive and running well.

See at Daily Steals

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HTC unsurprisingly considering strategic investments, spin-offs amidst lengthy financial struggles

We already know HTC’s finances aren’t great.

Despite recent successes with Vive and more recently the much-loved U11, HTC is still facing financial difficulties as its revenues have continued to fall for several years. According to sources of Bloomberg, HTC has reached the point of considering strategic business changes including sales or spin-offs of portions of the company.

HTC is said to have been working with and advisor to work on several different options for improving its financial position, which should come as little surprise to those following the mobile industry. An outright sale of the entire company is the least likely option due its size and relatively small potential market of buyers. A more likely result to these new discussions would be finding a strategic investment partner or spinning out various parts of the business to capitalize on their success (in the case of Vive) or cut dead weight (in the form of perhaps manufacturing facilities or other large assets).

HTC isn’t going away, but the backend of its business operations has to change to keep going.

The steady march of Samsung reaching the point of taking in a vast majority of worldwide profits from Android phone sales has hurt a lot of companies, but HTC has been put in a particularly precarious position. Over the past five years or so HTC has continued to give up market share on both the high-end to Samsung and also on the low-end to the likes of Huawei, Oppo and Motorola. At the same time, HTC continued to hold onto many vestiges of when it was one of the “big” manufacturers, with a large product portfolio, thousands upon thousands of employees and many large assets. In an essence, it just hasn’t been nimble enough.

Exploring new avenues for the future operation of HTC doesn’t necessarily mean the company is going away in terms of what we know and love about it. HTC is, after all, still valued at nearly $2 billion. But this surely means that there are changes to the back-end of the business in the works that could slim down the company and keep it around for some time coming.

HTC U11

• HTC U11 review
• HTC U11 specs
• Manufacturing the U11: Behind the scenes
• Join our U11 forums
• HTC U11 vs Galaxy S8
• HTC U11 vs LG G6

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