Lifeboat Foundation

Dunwoody officials said Thursday that no data was compromised during the ransomware attack, which was detected on Christmas Eve and is now under investigation by the FBI. The intrusion was quickly identified by staff, which worked with the city’s computer security contractors at InterDev to shut down servers and disconnect computers in order to limit the impact of the attack.

“As soon as we detected a problem, we took immediate steps to protect the city’s infrastructure,” Ashley Smith, InterDev’s director of government services, said in a news release. “Data back-ups were used to fully restore systems with no loss.”

Dunwoody police Chief Billy Grogan said the attackers demanded a ransom be paid in bitcoin, a digital currency. He declined to reveal the amount requested but said the city did not pay.

“Now we have a situation that is unique in modern history when they are trying to catch up to us,” he said. “Not a single country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.”

The Pentagon and the U.S. military services have been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes “it’s probably a matter of a couple of years” before the U.S. has one. He has called it a priority as the military works to develop new long-range fire capabilities.

The U.S. also has repeatedly warned Congress about hypersonic missiles being developed by Russia and China that will be harder to track and defeat. U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the more advanced hypersonic threats. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

The US government has placed software designed to train neural networks to analyse satellite images under new export controls in a bid to prevent foreign adversaries using said code.

The decision, made by Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), is effective today. Vendors shipping software subject to the controls – in that the applications help machine learning systems annotate satellite images in a particular way – will have to apply for a license to sell their products to customers outside of the US and Canada.

“Items warrant control for export because the items may provide a significant military or intelligence advantage to the United States or because foreign policy reasons justify control,” the BIS said.

The first U.S. government website has been hacked post the killing of Qassem Suleimani, exposing the true nature of the short-term threat.

Foreign ministry officials believe another country may be responsible.

Starfleet Begins

Steven L. Kwast is a retired Air Force general and former commander of the Air Education and Training Command at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering, he holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a past president of the Air Force’s Air University in Montgomery, Alabama, and a former fighter pilot with extensive combat and command experience. He is the author of the study, “Fast Space: Leveraging Ultra Low-Cost Space Access for 21st Century Challenges.”

Continue reading “Steven Kwast | The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force” »

The U.S. Army this week has banned TikTok from government-owned devices as scrutiny over the platform’s relationship with China grows.

NUCLEAR THERMAL PROPULSION

BWX Technologies, Inc. is a leading supplier of nuclear components and fuel to the U.S. government, also providing components and services to the commercial nuclear power industry.

As access to the internet grows, so do the risks associated with being online. Cybersecurity threats are on the rise as data hackers find new ways to breach through firewalls. Earlier this year bad actors were able to gain access to the administrative serves of India’s largest nuclear power plant with a simple phishing email.

The government want to increase its cyber might to ward off such hazards but experts feel some of its policies might do the exact opposite.

2020 will be a busy year for India with the 5G spectrum auction still pending, Personal Data Protection Bill under discussion, and the deadline for social.

Continue reading “5G, AI, data privacy and mass surveillance — 12 biggest tech policy challenges India will have to face in 2020” »