Author: Thomas J Ackermann

NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center   The United States is expected to make its offensive cyber warfare capabilities available to NATO, officials said Wednesday, as the alliance seeks to strengthen its defenses against Russian electronic attacks. Britain and Denmark have already publicly committed cyber resources to NATO, and Washington is expected to announce that it…

The U.S. Department of Defense’s sixth public bug bounty program, Hack the Marine Corps, has concluded, and white hat hackers who took part in the challenge earned more than $150,000. Hack the Marine Corps was hosted by the HackerOne bug bounty platform and it ran for 20 days. Over 100 experts were invited to test…

During the Soviet era, the country’s top computer scientists and programmers largely worked for the secret services. That practice appears to have resumed under President Vladimir Putin, as Russia faces accusations of waging a global campaign of cyber attacks. Dutch officials on Thursday accused four Russians from the GRU military intelligence agency of attempting to…

The state of California recently passed a bill that requires the manufacturers of connected devices to use unique hardcoded passwords for each device manufactured. The bill, meant to combat the widespread use of weak passwords in connected devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) products, also demands that manufacturers implement a security feature in their…

CNET’s Dan Patterson interviewed Kevin Mitnick, a former most wanted computer criminal, and now the founder of Mitnick Security Consulting and chief Hacking Officer of the security awareness training company KnowBe4, about emerging cybersecurity trends and how we can prepare for attacks. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.   Dan Patterson: Can…

Load planning Speed and efficiency is everything with containerised shipping. The Container Load Plan (also known as a bay or stowage plan, or Ship Planning System) is a key part of that.     I’ll explain the detail of the messaging format in a separate blog about BAPLIE EDIFACT syntax. There’s a lot one can…

Reading legal documents is not something I usually enjoy. The Muller indictment of the Russian DNC hackers was different – the amount of detail revealed in the document stunned me, and suggests that the US had very deep visibility into the hackers’ operations. In this article I am not going to look at the details…

The development of the malware tracked as Triton, Trisis and HatMan was supported by a research institute owned by the Russian government, FireEye reported on Tuesday. The Triton attack, aimed at industrial control systems (ICS) at a critical infrastructure organization in the Middle East, came to light in December 2017. The malware targeted Schneider Electric’s…

Eternal Blue was not the only spytool stolen from NSA and distributed by Shadow Broker. Dark Pulsar was also lost and dumped in the wild and Kaspersky has an interesting analysis on this.   Kaspersky Lab said today that it detected computers infected with DarkPulsar, a malware implant that has been allegedly developed by the…

(this reads like sponsored content, and it is — still, useful info)   1) Safeblocks (securing dApps on less-secure Blockchain copies) 2) Incapsula (DNS tooling) 3) HoxHunt (minimizing human error, the 90% cause of hacks) 4) PerimeterX (fighting scalping and scraping bots) 5) WhiteSource (managing open-source vulnerabilities) 6) Cloud Management Suite (patching cloud-based services automatically)…

What we caught: traditional Anti-Virus (AV) weaknesses This map shows when our remediation products clean up malware on these devices, as they’re happening around the globe, in real time. It’s also important to note that this map does not show remediation results for any potentially unwanted programs. Including these would more than double the number…

“shifting the grunt work from the grunts to machines” By adding autonomous features, cargo vehicles like this could carry out the same mission without need for human occupants. (Oshkosh Defense)   Simple subtraction explains the impetus for self-driven supply convoys: For every autonomously driven vehicle, that’s one fewer human driver needed, and likely one or…

The Army is maturing several concepts, capabilities and units to conduct tactical cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence and information operations to support brigade commanders. (Spc. Kiara V. Flowers/Army) “While the commander doesn’t need to be fluent in geek-speak, he has to at least have a good understanding of his virtual battle space.” “It got everybody’s attention…

Recent advancements in commercial drones and their use by the military bring vehicle and drone manufacturers closer offering integrating drones with manned or unmanned combat vehicles.     AeroVironment is working with General Dynamics Land Systems to tighten the integration of its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) with General Dynamics’ combat vehicles. According to nextbigfuture.com, the…

Neutral Explosives Detection Algorithm in Development In order to upgrade and improve airport security systems, the U.S. government and airport security experts are working to develop vendor-neutral software for explosives detection in baggage-screening systems at airports and other ports of entry. The idea is to develop explosives detection algorithms able to run on a variety…