The Department of Homeland Security has so far found no evidence that U.S. federal Domain Name System servers have been compromised by a global DNS hijacking campaign, FCW reported Friday.

Jeanette Manfra, an official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told FCW in an interview that, based on preliminary forensic analysis, there are no indications that attackers have managed to alter the DNS records for U.S. federal domains.

The DNS hijacking operation was initially reported by Talos, Cisco’s cyber threat intelligence division, in November of 2018. In response to the same threat, the DHS in January sent out an emergency directive instructing federal agencies to immediately secure their DNS servers and ascertain the integrity of their DNS records.

DNS helps translate human-readable domain names into Internet Protocol addresses, which computers or mobile devices need to locate information online. Through DNS hijacking, attackers falsify DNS records, causing users to be redirected to fraudulent IP addresses where information can then be intercepted or manipulated.

Ars Technica reports that the hijacking campaign has affected numerous private companies and governments around the world. 

Congress has earmarked $655M in fiscal year 2019 funds for the construction of the lead ship for the U.S. Coast Guard’s new fleet of Polar Security Cutters to aid Arctic missions, USNI News reported Friday. The Coast Guard will also receive $20M to procure long lead time materials for a second heavy icebreaker under the Department of Homeland Security’s FY 2019 appropriations measure.

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The service branch said in a statement that it plans to have a fleet of six polar icebreakers, three of which must be heavy icebreakers. “Diminishing Arctic sea ice is expanding access to the region and attracting attention from both partner and rival states across the globe,” the Coast Guard said in the statement.

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According to USCG, increased maritime activities due to resource extraction, tourism, commercial shipping, fisheries and traditional Alaskan activities warrant a greater need for Coast Guard presence in the area. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, America’s only heavy icebreaker, was commissioned in 1976 and has been operational for more than four decades. The second USCG Polar Sea icebreaker stopped operating since 2010 due to an engine failure.

The General Services Administration has taken $20.7M from the government’s Technology Modernization Fund for the development of a new cloud-based pay and personnel management system, Federal Times reported Tuesday.

The funds will support the GSA NewPay project that was meant to be a 10-year, $2.5B contract the agency awarded to teams led by Carahsoft and Grant Thornton. The additional funds are intended to speed up the project’s progress.

The TMF currently has $11M remaining after the recent obligation.

During a recent West Coast IT conference, the Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly announced the department wants to create a new assistant secretary position, Federal News Network reported Thursday. The move to create the Senate-confirmed position comes as part of the efforts to keep up with the additional authorities that Congress granted to the Department of Defense chief information officer, Modly added. 

The new assistant secretary would have expanded CIO duties such as leading the development of relevant strategies and policies while also overseeing IT and cyber issues across the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. As part of its restructuring plan, the Navy intends to eliminate the assistant secretary role for energy, installations and environment and move the responsibilities to the assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition.

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Modly noted that the staff working under the DON CIO’s will transfer to the new assistant secretary position. The Navy has yet to provide a detailed timeline for the effort due to its plans to consult with Congress on the reorganization.

The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration has approved a $1.1B concept design for the Advanced Sources and Detectors program involving subcritical experiments to maintain the nation’s nuclear deterrent, DOE said Thursday. The ASD project will support the U.S. stockpile stewardship program and revolve around generating high-speed and high-fidelity images of subcritical experiments that don’t produce nuclear yield.

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Charles Verdon, deputy administrator for defense programs at NNSA, said the diagnostic capability will help scientists study plutonium reactions under extreme conditions and advance the nation’s nuclear preparation without having to conduct underground testing. The Los Alamos National Laboratory will lead the effort and partner with research entities such as the Sandia National Laboratories, Nevada National Security Site and Livermore National Laboratory. The program comes as part of NNSA’s Enhanced Capabilities for Subcritical Experiments looks to ensure the responsiveness of U.S. nuclear infrastructure in compliance with the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.