/
State Department Announces Reward Offer for Cybercrime Information
Published on
State Department Announces Reward Offer for Cybercrime Information

The State Department is offering up to $10 million in rewards through the Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program for information that could help identify and locate individuals involved in malicious cyber operations against U.S. critical infrastructure.

Certain malicious cyber activities homing in on critical infrastructure may be considered a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the State Department said Thursday.

Violations of CFAA may include intentional unauthorized access to a computer and transmission of extortion threats as part of ransomware attacks.

The State Department said the RFJ program has established a Tor-based reporting channel to protect the security and safety of individuals providing tips and is collaborating with interagency partners to facilitate information processing and payment of rewards to sources. The department may pay potential sources in the form of cryptocurrency through the RFJ program.

In January 2020, the State Department awarded IST Research a contract to support the RFJ program.

/
Air Force Research Lab’s Spacecraft Completes MEO Test Mission; Robert Johnston Quoted
Published on
Air Force Research Lab’s Spacecraft Completes MEO Test Mission; Robert Johnston Quoted

An Air Force Research Laboratory-built small spacecraft carrying four experiment suites has completed its mission after almost two years in orbit.

The Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) mission aimed to collect data for the Department of Defense to understand the impact of environmental factors in medium-Earth orbit on spacecraft components, AFRL said Monday.

The DSX satellite lifted off June 25, 2019, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and entered the passivation stage on May 31, 2021.

Robert Johnston, DSX principal investigator, said scientists and engineers will analyze data from more than 1,300 experiments during the mission as part of efforts to transform military spacecraft design work at the laboratory.

The Wave-Particle Interaction Experiment was the first of the four experiment suites and examined the unique particle behavior crucial for the development of technologies for Radiation Belt Remediation.

The second effort, Space Weather Experiment, studied locations and intensities of different particle types within the Van Allen Belts.

The succeeding experiment suite known as the Space Effects Experiment calculated the degradation of spacecraft components that were commonly used during the mission.

The Adaptive Controls Experiment was the final effort for the mission to determine how to operate large orbiting structures for future flight operations.

/
U.S. Government, Allies Link Microsoft Exchange Hack to China
Published on
U.S. Government, Allies Link Microsoft Exchange Hack to China

The U.S. government and allies, including the U.K., European Union and NATO, have attributed the Microsoft Exchange Server (MSS) and other malicious cyber activities to threat actors with ties to China’s ministry of state security. 

Cyber actors linked to China’s MSS used zero day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server to perform “cyber espionage operations,” the White House said Monday.

The Biden administration exposed China’s use of contract hackers to carry out ransomware attacks, cryptojacking and other unsanctioned cyber operations worldwide for financial gain. 

The White House said the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed criminal charges against four hackers linked to MSS for their alleged involvement in a multiyear cyber campaign against foreign entities and governments in defense, maritime, aviation, health care and education sectors.

The current administration also cited efforts to improve the U.S. government’s cyber defenses in response to the Microsoft Exchange incident disclosed in March, such as launching proactive network defense actions, including private companies in the Cyber Unified Coordination Group to address vulnerabilities, funding five cyber modernization efforts across the government and working with the private sector to address cyber vulnerabilities facing critical infrastructure.

The FBI, National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) issued a new advisory Monday to shed light on additional Chinese state-sponsored cyber techniques used to compromise U.S. and allied networks.

/
FAA Opens New Field Office to Monitor Safety of Commercial Space Operations in Texas, New Mexico; Wayne Monteith Quoted
Published on
FAA Opens New Field Office to Monitor Safety of Commercial Space Operations in Texas, New Mexico; Wayne Monteith Quoted

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has opened a new safety field office in Houston, Texas, in an effort to enhance monitoring of the increasing commercial space operations in the area and in New Mexico.

The new facility will host inspectors tasked to oversee ongoing testings and other work by SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and other space companies, FAA said Monday.

"Keeping the public safe as the pace of commercial space operations increases requires the FAA to adapt, be agile, and remain vigilant," explained Wayne Monteith, associate administrator of commercial space operations at FAA.

The new office is one of the agency's recent efforts to follow the boom of commercial space launch and reentry activities. In March, FAA streamlined its space operations licensing processes to spend more time monitoring launch and reentry safety than processing applications.

The agency also activated the Space Data Integrator, a new capability that can track space vehicles in near-real-time as they pass through the National Airspace System, in June.

/
David Ziska: NSA Program Offers Pre-Vetted Commercial Tech Products for Classified Telework
Published on
David Ziska: NSA Program Offers Pre-Vetted Commercial Tech Products for Classified Telework

The U.S. Army and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have turned to a National Security Agency (NSA) program to obtain pre-vetted platforms designed to secure classified government data in remote environments, FedTech Magazine reported Monday.

David Ziska, deputy director of NSA's Commercial Solutions for Classified program, said the CSfC inventory has 22 categories across multiple product lines with most of the offerings already familiar to customer agencies.

"With the approved list, the components are more accessible and procurement can be less of a challenge," Ziska added.

The Army implemented tools from the CSfC products list for a pilot program at Fort Gordon in Georgia that aimed to help the service branch's remote workers gain access to its unclassified and classified networks using one computing device.

Meanwhile, AFRL adopted a virtual private network tunnel framework via the CSfC program to support classified telework of senior Air Force leaders.

///
Millennium Engineering and Integration Awarded Potential $180M USSF and SMC Task Order; QuantiTech CEO Patrick Murphy Quoted
Published on
Millennium Engineering and Integration Awarded Potential $180M USSF and SMC Task Order; QuantiTech CEO Patrick Murphy Quoted

Millennium Engineering and Integration, a subsidiary of QuantiTech, announced in March that the company secured a potential $180 million United States Space Force (USSF) Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) Technical and Engineering Support (STS-3) task order in support of the SMC Development Corps (DC).

The task order requires the Millennium to do strategic planning, development planning, engineering and prototype development for select Pre-Milestone B space concepts and prototypes. The task order’s base period is five years.

The work on this new prime task order will mainly be performed at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California; Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO; and at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“This is the culmination of Millennium’s extensive involvement with several Directorates at SMC over the last ten years. Millennium and our teammates are pleased to continue our support of the Space and Missile Systems Center as it becomes part of the newly formed Space Systems Command of the US Space Force,” commented Patrick Murphy, president and CEO of QuantiTech.

The company will provide planning for future space capabilities, mission area architectures and roadmaps, analytic processes, acquisition of space systems for the control, tools and products and exploitation of air and space for Milestone A and Pre-Milestone B activities within SMC.

“The award of the STS-3 DC contract demonstrates SMC’s confidence in our team’s capabilities and capacity to ensure the USSF delivers resilient, affordable, and sustainable space capabilities for our nation,” stated Daniel Benjamin, Millennium’s Space and Cyber Systems business unit vice president.

//
L3Harris And International Partners To Develop NATO Surveillance Concepts; Dave Johnson Quoted
Published on
L3Harris And International Partners To Develop NATO Surveillance Concepts; Dave Johnson Quoted

L3Harris Technologies announced on Monday that the company is working with a team of leading international defense and technology companies to develop surveillance concepts for NATO to replace the organization’s aging Airborne Warning and Control System fleet by 2035.

”L3Harris has the skill and experience to address AFSC program complexities across all domains air, land, sea, space and cyber,” said Charles Davis, L3Harris’ International vice president. 

“The team has approached the Risk Reduction Feasibility Study phase with an open mind towards the platforms and digital architectures that will best achieve NATO’s objectives. It is critical to give NATO and the member nations as much flexibility as possible in developing advanced technology, highly adaptive, cost-effective AFSC concept shaped to meet evolving hybrid challenges” added Davis. 

L3Harris will lead the international team, which unifies the expertise across the international stage, sharing a vision of a data-centric, platform-agnostic approach. The other international team members will be announced at a future date.

The company and other team members will analyze the risks and feasibility of candidate components within its systems to strengthen NATO’s military advantage to 2035 and beyond.

L3Harris and its teammates have already delivered a High-Level Technical Concept (HLTC) study to NATO in 2020 as one of six suppliers. The study included detailed support across all business segments focused on data-centric architecture. The HLTC covered all aspects of multidomain surveillance and control over the full spectrum of benign, permissive, contested and denied operational environments.

“NATO has made it very clear that its objective is to ensure data and information are placed at the heart of all future AFSC capabilities,” commented Dave Johnson, L3Harris’ vice president of Strategy and Integrated Mission Systems.

 “With our data-centric, platform-agnostic architecture approach and experience building JADC2 capabilities, the L3Harris team is committed to working with NATO, studying all aspects of its flagship program and developing a concept for joint all-domain surveillance and control for the AFSC program,” concluded Johnson. 

/
Bicameral Legislation Team Introduce Bill to Protect Sensitive Research; Sen. Angus King Quoted
Published on
Bicameral Legislation Team Introduce Bill to Protect Sensitive Research; Sen. Angus King Quoted

Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Susan Wild, D-Pa., partnered with Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and James Lankford, R-Okla., to present a bill that aims to secure critical U.S. research from China, Russia and other foreign threats.

The bicameral bill would task the secretary of state to identify allied countries that pursue critical technology research in partnership with the U.S., Gallagher's office said Wednesday.

Leaders of the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Security Council (NSC), the Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies of relevance will provide input to help the state secretary come up with the list. The State Department would report these results to Congress.

The legislation would then require agencies to develop security policies that aim to protect sensitive research pursued by commercial, academic and government entities.

“American researchers are responsible for some of the world’s most cutting-edge research in key technological fields, and it is critical that we protect our breakthroughs from rival nations who would seek to steal our advances and turn them against us,” King said.

/
Thomas Santucci: Agencies Must Take Pre-Migration Steps to Adopt Cloud
Published on
Thomas Santucci: Agencies Must Take Pre-Migration Steps to Adopt Cloud

Thomas Santucci, director of information technology modernization at the General Services Administration (GSA), said federal agencies need to consider business value and procurement strategies when migrating assets to the cloud. 

Santucci said at an Advanced Technology Academic Research Center event last Tuesday that agencies need to first determine the business-related requirements of cloud migration, then move forward with other pre-migration activities, Government CIO Media and Research reported Friday.

These activities include associated workforce training and assessments on procurement strategies. Santucci also said that agencies must implement security, governance and financial structures.

“The governance structure is really important, to utilize the cloud agency experts in the cloud governance policy control policies, and then the finance — which is really important and probably deficient in the government today — which focuses on common cost considerations and tagging strategy to track costs,” the GSA executive said.

He also tackled the importance of zero-trust security adoption, which is a key element of President Biden's cybersecurity executive order.

/
AFRL Rolls Out Effort to Expand S&T Partner Network; Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle Quoted
Published on
AFRL Rolls Out Effort to Expand S&T Partner Network; Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle Quoted

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has launched a program that seeks innovative concepts from a wider pool of science and technology professionals. 

The Department of the Air Force (DAF) said Sunday its new Air and Space Forces Science & Technology Front Door program seeks to expand AFRL's network of S&T partners.

The program's corresponding website is designed to help DAF engage with potential partners, gather industry input and disseminate information on the department's S&T projects.

USAF's AFWERX innovation program is also working to expand AFRL's partnerships through the AFVentures, Spark and Prime efforts. AFVentures invests in commercial partners, Spark engages with innovators and Prime supports emerging technology markets that show military potential.

"By expanding our presence and creating more visible and convenient virtual front doors, we are cultivating a worldwide ecosystem of research from basic to applied that drives the pace of technology and competition in the agile pursuit of innovative solutions for warfighters and stakeholders alike,” said Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, AFRL commander.

1 … 1,042 1,043 1,044 1,045 1,046 … 2,621