Tag: DEFENSE

A high-tech form of miniaturized radar capable of detecting incoming fire will be added to some soldiers' arsenals starting later this month. The Army just announced plans to ship 13,000 of the card-deck-sized Individual Gunshot Detectors to troops in Afghanistan. Four sensors detect soundwaves emitted by distant gunfire, while a monitor transmits information on its origins to the soldier. ...

Despite improvements made in recent years, the U.S. is still highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks, the head of the military's cyber-forces warned yesterday. "To put it bluntly, we are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces," General Keith Alexander told the House Armed Services Committee. Alexander noted that the Pentagon is working on building up its network defenses, ...

British scientists are developing an active camouflage system for tanks that uses electronic ink to project images of the surrounding terrain onto the armored vehicle's shell. According to The Telegraph, electronic sensors would be placed on the tank's exterior. These sensors scan the environment, and use the e-ink to project colors, lines and shapes onto the tank's hull -- turning the vehicle ...

An awe-inspiringly complex piece of malware named 'Stuxnet' has some security experts openly wondering whether or not it's the most sophisticated worm ever to hit the planet. Others are speculating that it may be used to target a nuclear plant in Iran. Although the worm originally popped up in June, when it attacked Windows PCs operating industrial control systems, cyber experts are only now ...

Maybe you heard about DARPA's (the creepy research arm of the government) secret, fake version of the Internet? It's been reported here and there, but, you know, those covert programs have a tendency to get swept under the rug. It was two years ago that DARPA received a directive from the White House and the Pentagon, as part of a $17 billion effort to strengthen national security, to build a ...

A few weeks ago, we told you about the Air Force's mysterious plans to launch the robotic, unmanned X37B shuttle into orbit. Now, less than a month later, the launch is going forward as planned, but the Force is still being strangely silent on details. After nearly a decade of arduous and expensive development, the X37B is slated to take off from Cape Canaveral on April 19, but, as FOXNews ...

Attention, amateur hackers: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight cyber-crime -- and he's getting pretty desperate, too. As cyber-attacks become more complex and virulent, the U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into securing our nation's digital borders. Problem is, it's facing a severe shortage of manpower. Out of the roughly 20,000 "elite" cyber-experts that the U.S. needs, there are ...

Details of the plan are still top secret, but we the American public have gotten our first glimpse of the federal government's cyber-security initiative. A five-page overview of the goals and components of the Comprehensive National Cyber-Security Initiative (CNCI) has been posted on WhiteHouse.gov. The initiative's measures include consolidating government networks and access points, ...

Very few beings could survive in the apocalyptic holocaust following a nuclear attack. Dr. Manhattan, certainly. Maybe The Toxic Avenger. Possibly even his Toxic Crusaders. But the creature most likely to survive is the cockroach, perhaps the hardiest, and ugliest, creature on the planet. Scientists at Texas A&M University's Nuclear Security Science & Policy Institute have found a way ...

Two months after delivering a speech that outlined sweeping cybersecurity plans, President Barack Obama and his staff are still struggling with just how to protect the country from electronic terrorists and spies. With the resignation of the woman many people thought could take the reigns, things won't get any easier, either. Melissa Hathaway, who led a cybersecurity review in April, resigned ...

On July 4th, as U.S. citizens celebrated the War of Independence, unknown cybercriminals launched a concentrated attack on several Federal Web sites. According to Associated Press reports, the unusually sophisticated attack affected Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Transportation Department Web sites. Sources familiar with the situation believe the ...

Cybercrime spans the entire globe, and, until now, there's been little collaboration between nations when it comes to combating international networks of hackers. The Wall Street Journal reports on the newly formed European Electronic Crime Task Force -- a Rome-headquartered effort between the United States and the European Union. The group is backed by the muscle of the U.S. Secret Service, an ...

Uh oh. There's a new leak on the Internet and it's more interesting than a naked celebrity. On May 6th, the government accidentally posted a 266-page document, some of which was marked "highly confidential," that contained detailed information about hundreds of the country's public and private nuclear facilities. Although not actually classified according to National Nuclear Security ...

The White House is preparing to create a new office that would coordinate cyber defense and offense, the New York Times reported yesterday. The new office would report to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council and would manage a multi-billion dollar effort to safeguard governmental computer networks from attack. In addition to protecting government equipment, the ...

Traditionally, modern warfare has been thought about in terms of bombs and bullets. Ladies and gentlemen, that is an antiquated concept of international conflict. According to CBS News, the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the last six months defending the United States against repeated attacks on the Pentagon and military bases around the country. You don't often hear about these ...