Collaborate Disseminate
For those of us who started experimenting with electricity when we were very young, one of the essential first skills was learning how to twist wires together. It seems like there’s not much to learn, but after a few failed attempts with nothing but your fingers, you learned a few …read more
Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Wire Splicing the Army Way
Although it isn’t that uncommon to have broadband radio coverage in a single device, going from 0 Hz to 1000 GHz with one antenna and receiver is a bit much. But not for the US Army it seems, because they’ve developed a quantum sensor that can cover that range.
The …read more
Continue reading Quantum Sensor Receives from 0 Hz to 1000 GHz
A federal contractor who worked on a U.S. Army IT system was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday for illegally accessing his employer’s network, stealing servers and proprietary information, and causing damage that resulted in more than $1 million in losses. Barrence Anthony, 40, worked for Federated IT, a federal contractor that provides IT services to government agencies. In this case, Federated IT provided services to the Office of the Army‘s Chaplain Corps, according to an affidavit obtained by CyberScoop. Federated IT was specifically working on building and managing a SharePoint instance for the corps hosted on Amazon Web Services. According to the affidavit, Anthony accessed the AWS instance on which the corps system was located after his employment was terminated on Dec. 8, 2016. Shortly thereafter, Anthony made backup versions of the system and moved the duplicates to his own AWS account. Later that night, Anthony logged back into […]
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U.S. Army Cyber Command could soon have a new identity. Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty said this week he wants his military outfit, dedicated to electronic warfare and information operations, to be renamed as the “Army Information Warfare Command.” The rechristening would better represent a new military mission, he said, and come at a time when Army cyber personnel increasingly deal with troll farms on social media, disrupt ISIS operations, and work to confuse international adversaries’ understanding of U.S. military units’ location. “The intent is to provide a proposal that will change us from Army Cyber Command to Army Information Warfare Command because we believe that is a more accurate descriptor of what I am being asked to do on a daily basis,” Fogarty said at the AFCEA TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia this week. But this change, which Fogarty said he intends to push internally at the Department of Defense over the next two months, is more than just a new […]
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Technology giant Cisco has agreed to pay $8.6 million to settle allegations it knowingly sold video surveillance equipment with security vulnerabilities to federal, state and local government agencies, according to court records unsealed Wednesday. A company whistleblower first informed Cisco in 2008 that a bug in its surveillance software could have enabled hackers to monitor video footage, delete footage and turn on or disable the systems. Government entities including the U.S. Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the New York Police Department had purchased the software, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the news. Cisco’s settlement appears to be the first whistleblower resolution of the False Claims Act, which prohibits defrauding the government, regarding cybersecurity issues. “The tech industry needs to fulfill its professional responsibility to protect the public from their products and services,” whistleblower James Glenn said in a statement. “There’s this culture that tends […]
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During my recent conversation with Peter Kraus, which was supposed to be focused on Aperture and its launch of the Aperture New World Opportunities Fund, I couldn’t help veering off into tangents about the market in general. Below is Kraus’ take on the availability of alpha generation, the Fed, inflation vs. Amazon, housing, the cross-ownership […] Continue reading Peter Kraus dishes on the market
The Indiana National Guard has posted a notice revealing it has fallen victim to a ransomware attack that compromised identifying information of its personnel. An anonymous attacker, or group of attackers, reportedly infiltrated a “nonmilitary… Continue reading Indiana National Guard hit by ransomware
Competition among U.S. weapons makers keeps them from collaborating on cybersecurity problems, and it’s causing new and lasting vulnerabilities for the military, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. Col. Tim Brooks, the mission assurance division chief in the Department of Army Management Office, said a lack of dialogue between contractors is causing headaches as the military looks to harden its systems. Broadly speaking, most weapons systems often overlay multiple different hardware and software products that are not all made by the same company. “With our weapons assessment program, there’s been a lot of time spent trying to break down organizational boundaries and to think about systems of systems,” Brooks said at the Security Through Innovation Summit presented by McAfee and produced by CyberScoop and FedScoop. “That’s compounded by the fact that all these systems of systems are produced by subprime contractors and everyones got non-disclosure agreements and no one wants to disclose their […]
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A pair of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would give the National Guard a bigger role in defending everything from election systems to dams from cyberattacks. The bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell, Wash., and Joe Manchin, W.Va., would set up National Guard “cyber civil support teams” in every state and territory “to bridge the gap between federal and non-federal cybersecurity efforts,” the senators’ offices said in a release. The bill would put $50 million toward the National Guard teams, which would be tasked with preventing and mitigating the impact of cyber incidents, training critical infrastructure operators, and relaying classified threat information from U.S. Cyber Command to the states and private companies. States would have until September 30, 2022 to make their National Guard cyber teams operational. Another Democrat from Washington State, Rep. Derek Kilmer, has introduced companion legislation in the house. “As cyberattacks on the United States increase, we must […]
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Lawmakers and Pentagon leadership are considering plans that could one day provide U.S. Cyber Command with additional authorities to more easily operate outside declared war zones, two senior U.S. officials acknowledged Wednesday during an open congressional hearing. The testimony confirms aspects of a story CyberScoop published Wednesday about a push inside the government to give more authority to the military’s top hacking unit. That story described concerns shared in the intelligence community about the potential impact of a spike in cyber warfare operations. Such a shift in policy may allow Cyber Command to offer more protection to private companies, including those that own and operate what the U.S. government considers “critical infrastructure.” When it comes to offensive measures, the shift could also open the door for soldiers to hack a much wider array of targets; beyond the Middle East, where the military is already engaged in firefights. Under existing authorities, U.S. […]
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