Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Home > OODA Analysis and Briefs
The SolarWinds hacks have been described in every media outlet and new source, making this incident perhaps the most widely reported cyber incident to date. This report provides context on this incident, including the “so-what” of the incident and actionable insights into what likely comes next.
Junaid Islam has 30 years of experience in secure communications. His protocols, algorithms and architectures have been incorporated into a broad range of commercial and national security systems. In the 90s he developed the first implementation of Multi-Level Precedence and Preemption (MLPP) for US Department of Defense C2 applications. He developed the first working Mobile…
As buy-side firms increasingly consume alternative data to glean the next trading edge, options strategies that accurately predict the cyber-risk of investment targets could unleash a wave of alpha for short sellers, threat-intelligence experts say. Short sellers, or investors that place bets on the price of an asset declining, trade by purchasing ‘put’ options or…
Juan Enriquez has succeeded as a businessman, academic, author and lecturer. For those who might not have met him via any of his many appearances and presentations, he can be succinctly described as an authority on the economic and political impacts of life sciences and a thinker able to help frame the much needed discussions…
All of DoD will embrace JADC2 – resistance is futile. The Air Force is the main architect, and the Army is gratefully climbing onboard, seeing an advantage to jumping in early and adopting lessons learned for Army advantages. Meanwhile, the Navy has been doing “JADC2-Like” operations for decades. Navy will make sure all their existing…
This panel of experts at OODAcon lead a thoughtful discussion on industrial policy that resulted in insights that can inform broad action in improving American innovation while protecting it for the use of open societies. Topics discussed will also be informative to any technology company seeking to do business with the US government.
The Top 10 Security, Technology, and Business Books of the year is a list compiled by OODA CEO Matt Devost and is typically one of the most popular posts on the site every year. This year, an eclectic list that takes care to avoid pandemic related topics and features some deep cuts that you won’t…
We previously wrote that the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is perhaps the most important program in DoD today. The Air Force plays a particularly important role in developing the JADC2 concept. They have been designated as the Executive Agent. That means they will have major input into how the framework is shaped. Their…
This panel at OODAcon brought together pioneering experts with ideas we believe hold the potential to cause order of magnitude improvements in cybersecurity posture. We the ensuing discussion resulted in actionable insights you can put in place in your organization immediately to kickstart your journey in mitigating cyber risk. The panel included discussion on: -…
On 18 November 2020 members of the OODA loop community gathered in a virtual event to discuss strategic factors critical to informed decision-making in the current era. Our goal: generate insights that can help leaders better understand markets, tech trends and geopolitical dynamics in a way that enables appropriate action. OODAcon aligned well with the…
When our founding fathers created the first Army and Navy after the Revolution, they began a long tradition of inter-service rivalry which continues today. The Department of Defense (DoD) periodically makes a concerted effort to force service branches to play better – together. Usually that occurs after some great and unfortunate example of disconnected operations.…
This post is based on an interview with Blake Bartlett, the CEO at Janes. It is part of our series of interviews of OODA Network members. Our objective with these interviews is to provide actionable information of interest to the community, including insights that can help with your own career progression. We also really like…
The Navy is using “Digital Twins” to help them speed up afloat innovation. Read how this effort will transform how Navy updates the Fleet. Can a Digital Twin help Navy deploy new technology without pulling the ship into port? Can a Digital Twin reduce the chance of breaking important mission critical systems?
Jerry Davis has spent decades succeeding in hard jobs supporting critically important missions. He is a decorated combat Veteran who served in he US Marines for 11 years including in Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield. He also served in the Central Intelligence Agency in service to world wide missions including leveraging technology in denied areas against…
Michael Sexton is the Cyber Program Director at the Middle East Institute. His latest book Cyber War & Cyber Peace in the Middle East: Digital Conflict in the Cradle of Civilization, is an anthology of essays examining flashpoints and developments in conflict in the cyber domain in the Middle East in the past 10 years.…
Critical vulnerabilities in a Delta OT monitoring product can allow hackers to hide their destructive activities from the victim. The affected product is Delta’s InfraSuite Device Master and the existence of the vulnerabilities came to light in late November. InfraSuite Device Master is described by the vendor as a data center facility monitoring software that…
Researchers have warned that powerful AI models could be used to supercharge online disinformation, cyberattacks or creation of bioweapons. European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules. Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and…
Meta is introducing default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for chats and calls across Messenger and Facebook, the company revealed on Wednesday. E2EE ensures that messages content is only visible to the person sending the message and the one receiving it. End-to-end encrypted chats have been available in Messenger since 2016, but as a Secret Conversations feature…
U.K. regulators said they are examining Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, marking a first push by one of the world’s most influential competition authorities to scrutinize the relationship between the tech giant and the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said Friday that it is seeking feedback on whether the partnership—and recent…
The recent step-change in AI opens new avenues for the development of artificial intelligence agents, independent programs or pieces of software that can interact with and act upon the outside world. Agents are already all around us, from advanced driver-assistance systems to smart speakers that can make to-do lists or provide real-time information on weather and…
Advanced Micro Devices is starting to roll out its newest chips for artificial intelligence, the company said on Wednesday, presenting Nvidia with perhaps its toughest challenge yet in the race to supply semiconductors that undergird the AI boom. The chips are expected to become widely available as manufacturers of servers incorporate them into their systems…
Reliable Robotics, a developer of autonomous flight control systems retrofitted in fixed-wing aircraft, said Wednesday it has successfully completed a remotely piloted flight of a Cessna 208B Caravan commanded from a control center 50 miles away. The flight, which had no human safety pilot onboard, took place last month. The aircraft took off from Hollister Municipal…
Google just announced Gemini, its most powerful suite of AI models yet, and the company has already been accused of lying about its performance. An op-ed from Bloomberg claims Google misrepresented the power of Gemini in a recent video. Google aired an impressive “what the quack” hands-on video during its announcement earlier this week, and columnist…
The Israeli military said on Thursday that fighters from the Lebanese Shia group carried out an antitank attack in northern Israel, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Beirut would be turned “into Gaza” if Hezbollah, which supports the Palestinian group Hamas, started an all-out war. The Israeli army said its jets struck a…
Taiwan has said that a dozen Chinese fighter jets and a balloon crossed the Taiwan Strait’s sensitive median line, as Taipei is on high alert for Chinese interference ahead of elections next month. While Beijing has been sending warplanes and vessels around Taiwan on a near-daily basis, nighttime activity by Chinese aircraft and the appearance…
US officials urge Israel to protect Gaza civilians but are unlikely to back calls for permanent truce as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) prepares to meet. The council is expected to convene on Friday to discuss a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the two-month-long war. Despite Washington’s warnings to Israel, the US is…
The Bluetooth protocol suffers from an authentication bypass flaw, CVE-2023-45866, allowing attackers within Bluetooth range to connect to vulnerable devices without user confirmation. This flaw, discovered by software engineer Marc Newlin, permits the injection of keystrokes, potentially enabling unauthorized actions like app installations or message forwarding. Newlin observed this issue in macOS, iOS, Android, and…
The United States and the United Kingdom have taken legal actions against two Russian individuals linked to cyber operations conducted for Russia’s FSB security service. Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko and Andrey Stanislavovich Korinets face charges related to computer fraud in the US for their alleged involvement in cyberespionage activities targeting government agencies, defense firms, and various…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that he will run in the 2024 presidential election. He is almost certain to win a fifth term as president, allowing him to continue leading Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The decision comes as little surprise, with Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine seen as having boosted patriotic support for…
The cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks disclosed that APT28, a Russian state-sponsored threat group, exploited a zero-click Outlook vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) in attacks targeting around 30 organizations across 14 nations, including NATO countries. This critical vulnerability, capable of being triggered through crafted email messages without requiring the recipient to open the email, was initially identified in…
The latest security update from WordPress tackles a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability that stems from a property oriented programming (POP) chain issue. This flaw, introduced in WordPress core 6.4, could potentially enable attackers to execute PHP code on vulnerable websites. Although the vulnerability isn’t directly exploitable within core, when combined with certain plugins,…
OpenAI has a new board, but its directors may still confront the same old problem. The artificial-intelligence startup’s unusual business structure that gave oversight of its for-profit business to a nonprofit board will be an unresolved issue for the new board to tackle. A popular suggested fix: Dissolve the nonprofit, say corporate and nonprofit directors,…
Meta Platforms Inc. is looking to promote the responsible development of artificial intelligence systems with a new initiative called Purple Llama. Announced today, it’s a project that Meta says will slowly make available all of the tools and evaluations the AI development community needs to build open generative AI models in a safe and responsible…
Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft said at an AMD investor event Wednesday they will use AMD’s newest AI chip, the Instinct MI300X. It’s the biggest sign so far that technology companies are searching for alternatives to the expensive Nvidia graphics processors that have been essential for creating and deploying artificial intelligence programs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.…
HR teams have moved beyond administrative and personnel-focused duties and are now leveraging data, analytics and artificial intelligence to create sweeping changes in the way companies manage people. Automation is a key driver of these changes. This shift is not just about streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency. It’s about adding strategic value to organizations by…
It’s been a little more than a year since OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit the web, setting off an explosion in interest in generative AI. In the months since, tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and others have debuted or announced they’re working on their own generative AI chatbots and products. But that’s so 2023. We’re…
Google this morning announced the rollout of Gemini, its largest and most capable large language model to date. Starting today, the company’s Bard chatbot will be powered by a version of Gemini, and will be available in English in more than 170 countries and territories. Developers and enterprise customers will get access to Gemini via…
Gecko Robotics has raised $100 million for its robots that assess the safety and condition of infrastructure for industries including defense, oil and manufacturing, according to a statement reviewed by Bloomberg News. The Pittsburgh-based company, whose customers include the US Navy last year’s Series Cand Air Force, received new investment as an extension to last…
X.AI, an artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk, has filed with the SEC to raise up to $1 billion in an equity offering. The company has already brought in nearly $135 million from four investors, with the first sale occurring on Nov. 29, and has a “binding and enforceable agreement” for the purchase of…
Google unveiled its new AI model Gemini on Wednesday, giving the public a first look at a technology that’s had the tech press mired in rumors. Gemini, the company’s most powerful AI to date, comes to Bard and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones starting today, and will soon integrate with other products across Google’s services including…
When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a global model for handling the technology. E.U. lawmakers had gotten input from thousands of experts for three years about A.I., when the topic was not even on the table in other countries. The result was…
Adverse weather conditions in Spain, particularly in its key olive oil-producing province, Jaén, have led to consecutive years of poor harvests, impacting the global olive oil market. Two years of drought have significantly reduced olive oil production, leading to soaring prices by more than 70% this year alone. This scarcity in supply from Spain, the…
The search for missing hikers following the volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s Mount Marapi concluded tragically as rescuers found the final victim, a woman, bringing the death toll to 23. After a 3km ash cloud engulfed the area, search efforts resumed on Tuesday, eventually locating the last missing hiker on Wednesday. Of the 75 individuals present…
Russian President Vladimir Putin is embarking on an unusual trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, a rare journey since an International Criminal Court warrant was issued against him in March. Expected to discuss Gaza, Ukraine, and oil production with UAE’s president, Putin aims to bolster ties, highlighting the UAE as a…
The cancellation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s high-profile briefing with US lawmakers has heightened concerns over future US funding for Ukraine. The impasse arises from the urgency of more military aid, as warned by a top Ukrainian official who expressed that without continuous US support, Ukraine risks losing ground against Russia. The abrupt cancellation of…
The personal genetics firm 23andMe recently confirmed a cyberattack that accessed data from around 6.9 million of its members. Although the hackers breached only about 0.1 percent of customer accounts (approximately 14,000), they gained access to information shared by genetically connected relatives. To counter this, 23andMe is notifying affected users, reinforcing security measures, and urging…
Forescout recently identified 21 vulnerabilities, named ‘Sierra:21’, in Sierra Wireless AirLink OT/IoT routers, with one critical and nine high-severity flaws. These vulnerabilities encompass issues like remote code execution, unauthorized access, authentication bypass, denial-of-service, and cross-site scripting. Exploitation could lead to credential theft, device control, and persistent access, posing risks across critical sectors like healthcare and…
The US cybersecurity agency CISA issued an alert cautioning organizations about the exploitation of the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability, CVE-2023-26360, initially patched in March 2023. Recent investigations uncovered its exploitation in attacks targeting a federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agency. Threat actors used this vulnerability to gain access to two agency systems across separate incidents in…
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that among 23 federal agencies, only three have fully implemented event logging requirements for incident investigation and remediation. As of August 2023, 17 agencies were classified as ‘not effective,’ and three were at the basic level. This lack of implementation impedes the government’s ability to detect, investigate, and address…
Microsoft is detailing a number of new features coming to its Copilot service soon, including OpenAI’s latest models. Copilot will get support for GPT-4 Turbo soon, alongside an updated DALL-E 3 model, a new code interpreter feature, and deep search functionality inside Bing. Copilot will soon be able to respond using OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 Turbo…
It’s been about a year since major headlines spoke of an insider at Google that felt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) had become ‘sentient’. Fast forward to today where AI is everywhere and has been stirring conversations ever since. It should be clear that while AI is a potential threat, it is ultimately a tool that…
A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving. Why it matters: Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be…
Meta, on an open source tear, wants to spread its influence further and wider in the ongoing battle for AI mindshare. This morning, the social network announced that it’s teaming up with IBM, whose audience is decidedly more corporate and enterprise, to launch the AI Alliance, a industry body to support “open innovation” and “open science”…
Hailed as a world first, European Union artificial intelligence rules are facing a make-or-break moment as negotiators try to hammer out the final details this week — talks complicated by the sudden rise of generative AI that produces human-like work. First suggested in 2019, the EU’s AI Act was expected to be the world’s first…
On Monday, Microsoft announced that it detected nation-state activity exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in its Outlook email application. The company stated that the threat actor attempted to gain unauthorized access to victim accounts within Exchange servers and attributed the activity to Forest Blizzard (aka APT28, Fancy Bear). Read More: https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/microsoft-warns-of-kremlin-backed-apt28.html
A recent attack on a mine owned by Podersoa, one of Peru’s top gold producers, left nine workers dead and 10 others in critical condition. Similar attacks in recent years have left scores of workers dead and cost billions of dollars in losses. Peru’s government blamed illegal miners and criminal gangs targeting mines for the…
In what appears to be the largest ground assault since a truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed last week, Israeli forces have launched their operation against the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli leaflets instructed residents to remain in shelters and hospitals. Read More: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-intensifies-southern-gaza-offensive-us-un-urge-civilian-protections-2023-12-05/
Cybersecurity firm BlackBerry discovered that a previously unknown threat actor conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a US aerospace organization in September 2022 and July 2023. The early stage appeared to be a ‘testing phase’, while the later phase included updated tools. Read More: https://www.securityweek.com/new-threat-actor-aeroblade-targeted-us-aerospace-firm-in-espionage-campaign/
U.S. and Japanese dive teams found the remains of five crew members from a V-22 Osprey aircraft that went down off Japan’s western coast last week. Divers located one crew member’s body last week, and two more crew members remain missing. Read More: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/remains-five-crew-found-after-us-osprey-aircraft-crashes-off-japan-us-air-force-2023-12-04/
Microsoft recently warned of a resurgence of CACTUS ransomware attacks spread through malvertising lures, likely perpetrated by the ransomware operator UNC2198 (aka Twisted Spider, Storm-0216). UNC2198 used this vector to deploy the DanaBot malware. Read More: https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/microsoft-warns-of-malvertising-scheme.html
Russian national Vladimir Dunaev pleaded guilty to developing and using the Trickbot malware. Trickbot was used in cyberattacks that caused tens of millions of dollars in damages globally. Read More: https://www.securityweek.com/russian-pleads-guilty-to-role-in-developing-trickbot-malware/
Guyanese Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo stated his country will remain vigilant after a Venezuelan referendum declared their territorial claim to the disputed Essequibo region. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has prohibited Venezuela from changing the status quo in the region, which is currently under Guyanese control. Read More: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guyana-will-stay-alert-after-venezuela-vote-territorial-dispute-vp-2023-12-04/
Weeks before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, the buzzy artificial intelligence company’s executive team devoted an entire meeting to debating one question: should they even release the tool? “If you know Sam [Altman], he likes to cycle through topics at a high rate, so the fact that we spent this much time on one topic…
The price of bitcoin (BTC) moved past $42,000 for the first time since April 2022 – a level not seen since before the crash of Terra – while Ether (ETH) moved past $2,200. Bitcoin’s price had been toying with the $40,000 level in recent days, but finally breached it Monday to trade above $41,600 as…
This time it’s Dhruv Batra, research director, FAIR (The Fundamental AI Research) at Meta. The Facebook parent describes FAIR thusly: The Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team at Meta seeks to further our fundamental understanding in both new and existing domains, covering the full spectrum of topics related to AI, with the mission of advancing the…
Sam Altman was reinstated soon after being fired as OpenAI CEO last month, but still stood to gain had the company continued to develop ChatGPT without him. During Altman’s tenure as CEO, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on AI chips from a startup called Rain AI into which he has…
Meta’s chief scientist and deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun said he believes that current AI systems are decades away from reaching some semblance of sentience, equipped with common sense that can push their abilities beyond merely summarizing mountains of text in creative ways. His point of view stands in contrast to that of Nvidia CEO Jensen…
The Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen has launched a series of new attacks against Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea to ramp up pressure on the US and Israel. This drew a response from a United States warship deployed in one of the world’s busiest maritime routes. The powerful group has promised more attacks will…
The U.S. government is making an intense effort to persuade Israel and Hamas to resume negotiations so they can once again pause hostilities and exchange more prisoners for hostages, a White House spokesman said on Sunday. John Kirby said that Hamas was to blame for the breakdown in the negotiations, saying that it had not…
A U.S. Navy destroyer shot down three drones during a sustained attack in the Red Sea on Sunday, the Pentagon said. These attacks were said to have come from areas in Yemen that are controlled by Iranian-backed militants. Sunday’s attack underscored the risks that the fight in Gaza could spiral into a wider conflict. For…
Three days after the end of a weeklong truce, Israel sharply expanded its evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in preparation for an expected ground invasion in the southern part of the territory. The Israeli military said over the weekend that it had approved plans for a larger ground invasion. Israeli forces have…
Scammers are hijacking hotels’ Booking.com accounts and using them as part of a hotel booking scam aimed at tricking guests into sharing their payment card information. Secureworks outlined an attack that occurred in October 2023, when a scammer contacted a hotel’s operations staff member by email. In this email they pretended to be a former…
According to a report from threat intelligence firm Recorded Future, North Korean state-sponsored threat actors are believed to have stolen more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency. Collectively tracked as the Lazarus Group, the North Korean hackers specialize in cryptocurrency-related intrusions, mainly relying on spear-phishing emails to trick victims into authorizing malicious scripts and downloading malware.…
Multiple organizations have been breached in the United States by Iran-affiliated hackers who targeted a specific industrial control device due to the fact that it was Israeli-made, U.S. and Israeli authorities said. Although there is no evidence of Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack into Israel by Hamas, it was expected that state-backed Iranian…
It started around 11:30 a.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, was having his weekly meeting with senior leaders when a panicked colleague told him to pick up the phone. An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain…
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Copyright © 2025 — All Rights Reserved.
Notifications
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence