By Annie Jacobsen Inside the Pentagon’s efforts to create a super-soldier—and change the future of the battlefield. Retired four-star general Paul F. Gorman recalls first learning about the “weakling of the battlefield” from reading S.L.A. Marshall, the U.S. Army combat historian during World War II. After interviewing soldiers who participated in the Normandy beach landings,…
Category: Technology
OPM Now Admits 5.6 Million Feds Fingerprints Were Stolen by Hackers
WHEN HACKERS STEAL your password, you change it. When hackers steal your fingerprints, they’ve got an unchangeable credential that lets them spoof your identity for life. When they steal 5.6 million of those irrevocable biometric identifiers from U.S. federal employees—many with secret clearances—well, that’s very bad. On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management admitted…
Buck Rogers Eat Your Heart Out! Drones Armed with High Energy Lasers Coming Soon
Predator maker looks beyond Hellfire missiles to the weapons of the future. Flying military robots armed with high-energy lasers? It’s a future that is exciting, terrifying — and perhaps just two years away. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., or GA–ASI, the San Diego-based company that makes the Predator and Reaper drones, is undertaking a privately funded…
The CIA’s Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets
RESEARCHERS WORKING with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept. The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the “Jamboree,” where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security…
Spy Agency Contractor Puts Out a $1M Bounty for an iPhone Hack
AS LONG AS hackers have sold their secret hacking techniques known as zero-day exploits to government spies, they’ve generally kept that trade in the shadows. Today it’s come into the spotlight with the biggest bounty ever publicly offered for a single such exploit: $1 million for a technique that can break into an iPhone or…
Apt. 29, aka “The Dukes”: 7 Years of Russian Cyber Espionage
Today we release a new whitepaper on an APT group commonly referred to as “the Dukes”. We believe that the Dukes are a well-resourced, highly dedicated, and organized cyber-espionage group that has been working for the Russian government since at least 2008 to collect intelligence in support of foreign and security policy decision-making. The Dukes…
How To Keep Hackers from Causing Chaos at the Gas Pumps
By Aliya Sternstein The FBI and Department of Homeland Security just issued new warnings about everyday objects that stay connected to an unsecured internet. Their public service announcements concern security risks posed by the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT, a situation where everyday objects connect to a network. Researchers this summer proved that connected items…
21st Century Facial Recognition Software: What the CO Needs to Know
By Hammerhead With America well on its way to becoming known as “Uncle Snoopy” versus “Uncle Sam”, one has only to look at the current surveillance state of Great Britain to see where most American cities will be in five years. At current count, Great Britain has over 5.9 Million CCTV cameras spread over…
Non-Kinetic Warfare Skills for the Civilian
The Kinetic Threats faced by the 21st Century Civilian Operator are getting more and more violent and random. Every day it seems we hear on the news about another Active Shooter, Carjacking, Kidnapping or Home Invasion. For most CO’s, this ignites a burning desire to train harder, more realistic and more enthusiastic than ever before….
Asymmetrical Warfare Moves Into Your iPad
Now that the Internet is so ubiquitous that you must accept direct deposit for your paycheck, and your refrigerator has to get online to check for sales on cottage cheese, we find ourselves totally dependent on a service that we don’t understand and can’t live without. System engineers, whether they work for huge companies…