The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CIAS) have called on organizations conducting research related to COVID-19 to implement cybersecurity measures to protect their work from foreign threat actors.

Cyber actors with ties to the Chinese government have been observed targeting U.S. research organizations to gain access to public health data and intellectual property related to vaccines and testing, FBI said Wednesday.

CISA and the FBI have recommended that organizations patch their systems for vulnerabilities, scan web applications for anomalous activities and unauthorized access, require multi-factor authentication and suspend access of users exhibiting malicious activity.

The bureau urged victims to report to their local field office any incidents of criminal or suspicious activity.

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI have released an alert detailing the top 10 software vulnerabilities exploited by foreign cyber threat actors from 2016 to 2019.

An alert published Tuesday says information technology security professionals at private and public sector institutions should prioritize patching of common vulnerabilities and exposures.

“A concerted campaign to patch these vulnerabilities would introduce friction into foreign adversaries’ operational tradecraft and force them to develop or acquire exploits that are more costly and less widely effective,” the alert reads. “A concerted patching campaign would also bolster network security by focusing scarce defensive resources on the observed activities of foreign adversaries.”

Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding technology, which enables documents to contain embedded content from spreadsheets and other applications, was the most commonly targeted platform by malicious threat actors, according to the alert.

CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2017-0199 and CVE-2012-0158 related to OLE were the most exploited vulnerabilities by threat actors from countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Other vulnerabilities cited are CVE-2017-5638, CVE-2019-0604, CVE-2017-0143, CVE-2018-4878, CVE-2017-8759, CVE-2015-1641 and CVE-2018-7600.

CISA and the FBI also found that malicious actors are targeting vulnerabilities in unpatched virtual private networks. They noted that a lack of contingency plans and system recovery and other cyber weaknesses have continued to make institutions vulnerable to ransomware attacks.

Seven teams have been selected to help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) drive quantum computing efforts under the first phase of the Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum initiative.

The program seeks to develop a hybrid concept that employs classical computing platforms and intermediate-size quantum devices to address gaps in combinatorial optimization, DARPA said Monday. DARPA noted the program could be implemented in electronics manufacturing, protein folding and global logistics management.

ColdQuanta, Georgia Tech Applied Research Corp., Universities Space Research Association and Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College will test a hybrid computing algorithm to complete a combinatorial optimization issue, while Clemson University, Lehigh University and the University of Tennessee will develop theoretical approaches for a quantum optimization paradigm.

DARPA will select the participants for the program's second phase based on the results of Phase 1.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has created a new electrical component that shows the potential to exceed 5G connectivity's expected speed. The resonant tunneling diode is made from gallium nitride and works to transport electrons at fast speeds via quantum tunneling, an occurrence wherein electrons move through physical barriers to produce current, NRL said Friday.

“Our work showed that gallium nitride-based RTDs are not inherently slow, as others suggested,” said Tyler Growden, an electrical engineer working on the program. The technology holds the potential for use in electromagnetic applications such as networking and communications.

Growden and physicist David Storm worked on the effort with partners from industry, Wright State University and Ohio State University. The two NRL researchers published their findings on the GaN tunneling diode in Applied Physics Letters, a research journal.

The team plans to continue the development of RTD, with the goal to boost current output without having to sacrifice power.

Students from Carnegie Mellon University have received NASA's approval for their lunar exploration robot to land on the moon.

The wheeled robot, known as Iris, has passed the agency's critical design review that is required for clearance to operate on the lunar surface, CMU said Tuesday.

Iris will fly aboard the Peregrine lander made by Astrobotic Inc. and land on the Moon in fall next year. Astrobotic helped NASA conduct the critical design review.

The robot is designed to support small research groups exploring the lunar surface. Astrobotic wants to commercialize Iris into the CubeRover product series. The CMU team will install Iris' flight-tailored components this summer. 

Astrobotic will provide NASA with 14 scientific payloads under a contract.