Author: Thomas J Ackermann

Soldiers assigned to 101st Sustainment Brigade “Lifeliners,” 101st Airborne Division, assist in response and recovery missions, Sept. 19 at Burgaw, North Carolina. Fort Campbell Soldiers are deployed to N.C. this week to support U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) efforts in assisting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies as requested during the Army response…

New information on the Ukraine 2016 electric grid attack (CRASHOVERRIDE, the first malware to specifically target and disrupt electric grid operations) is now available. Joe Slowik released his new paper that goes into new information on the attack, such as how the malware was put into place and the adversary (ELECTRUM) behind it.   Anatomy…

Radical Speaker Series: Countering Weaponized Information 4 December 2018 Request to Attend Deadline: 23 November    On 4 December, SOFWERX, in collaboration with USSOCOM/J5 Donovan Group, will host a Radical Speaker Series covering weaponized information. Mass influence operations, deep fakes, and social media metrics have been used by state and non-state actors in attempts to influence everything…

“Maryland has the largest cybersecurity employee population in the U.S.”   Port Covington is planting a flag as a cybersecurity hub. With the first phase of development on the South Baltimore peninsula, leaders are aiming to create a magnet for cyber and tech companies, providing a landing point where companies can locate while drawing from…

Beneath an American flag, 20 people packed tight into a beige conference room are Facebook’s, and so too the Internet’s, first line of defense for democracy. This is Facebook’s election security war room. Screens visualize influxes of foreign political content and voter suppression attempts as high-ranking team members from across divisions at Facebook, Instagram, and…

A new study found that just 42,000 of those hacked home devices could be enough to leave a country of 38 million people in the dark.   When the cybersecurity industry warns about the nightmare of hackers causing blackouts, the scenario they describe typically entails an elite team of hackers breaking into the inner sanctum…

The Pentagon on Friday said there has been a cyber breach of Defense Department travel records that compromised the personal information and credit card data of U.S. military and civilian personnel. According to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, the breach could have affected as many as 30,000 workers, but that number may grow…

With their long-term strategy to walk away from the old, cumbersome, and many-times-patches Windows, this makes perfect sense in switching to open source and ist vast resources and people. A decade after claiming that Linux and open-source software infringes on more than 200 of its patents, Microsoft is now pledging its patents to the Open…

Conceptual diagram of a PDoS attack: 1) Attack sponsor hires botnet herder. 2) Botnet herder uses server to manage recruitment. 3) Malware scans for vulnerable IoT devices and begins cascading infection. 4) Botnet herder uses devices (e.g., HVAC controllers) to deplete bandwidth of a cyber-physical service (e.g., electrical power).  APT: Advanced Persistent Threats (advanced hacking,…

The Borg are coming – they are only 3 billion miles away   The perennial optimists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, have joined the rest of the world in deploying AI to help manage huge data sets — and their efforts almost instantly bore fruit. Seventy-two new “fast radio bursts” from a…