OODA Analysis and Briefs

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Analysis

China’s Plan for Countering Weaponized Interdependence

In an article entitled “The international environment and countermeasures of network governance during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period” by Xu Xiujun (徐秀军) in the February 27, 2021 edition of China Information Security, we see the continuation of China’s concerns over Weaponized Interdependence and China’s desire to shape a global technology and economic environment that is…
Executive Level Action In Response to Ongoing Massive Attacks Leveraging Microsoft Vulnerabilities

This post provides executive level context and some recommendations regarding a large attack exploiting Microsoft Exchange, a system many enterprises use for mail, contact management, calendar/scheduling and some basic identity management functions. This attack is so large and damaging it is almost pushing the recent Solar Winds attacks off the headlines. Keep in mind that…
National Cyber Ranges: Virtual environments that enable government organizations to test their cyber capability

National cyber ranges are virtual environments that enable government organizations to test their cyber capability. It’s important to rehearse military operational plans and develop new tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s) that can work in a contested cyber landscape. These ranges are distributed computing environments with technical experts that can support exercises and operational planning.
Robert Wallace on a Career in Intelligence and The Spy Sites Series and Spy Craft

Robert Wallace spent a 33 year career with the Central Intelligence Agency and is widely known for the very well done books he and co-author Keith Melton have produced on the history, culture and tradecraft of intelligence (including the SpyCraft book which was turned into a Netflix series and the Spy Sites series of books…
From Solar Sunrise to Solar Winds: The Questionable Value of Two Decades of Cybersecurity Advice

While the Ware Report of 1970 codified the foundations of the computer security discipline, it was the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection report of 1997 that expanded those requirements into recommendations for both discrete entities as well as the nascent communities that were growing in and around the Internet. Subsequent events that were the…
The OODA Almanac – 2021 Edition

As a logger and holstein farmer, my grandfather was heavily dependent on the weather for his livelihood. Each year, he purchased a copy of the Old Farmer’s Almanac and it was kept in an easily accessible reading spot for reference. Taken on a day by day basis, the Farmer’s Almanac was not the greatest of…
Blueprint for a Blue Ocean

In January 2021, the Department of Navy released their Strategic Blueprint for a Blue Arctic. The document outlines their plan to prepare for an increasingly available and navigable Arctic Region. Signed by the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, it looks forward twenty years and…
Maritime Reconnaissance – Manned and Unmanned Teaming

The Navy is keenly interested in what is over the horizon or under the surface of the ocean. Maritime Patrol Reconnaissance Aircraft (MPRA) have filled a critical role since the 1960’s. Through sonobouys and onboard sensors, these aircraft sweep the ocean (above and below) to find the enemy. To do this well, the Navy uses…
Surface Navy Symposium – Highlights from Navy Leadership

The annual Surface Navy Association Symposium is where BIG NAVY gathers together to contemplate high level fleet issues with top leadership. Thanks to COVID (never thought I’d say that!) this year’s conference was virtually available to anyone with a computer and a credit card. The Chief of Naval Operations started off the week and was…
Michael Saylor Ignites CEO Interest in Bitcoin: Expect an acceleration of the inevitable

During MicroStrategy World, Michael Saylor lead a focused discussion on the mega trends of finance he believes make the transition to Bitcoin as a global store of value inevitable. One of the most informative sessions was a discussion with a leading Bitcoin expert, Ross Stevens. Ross is CEO and founder of the New York Digital Investment…
Wallstreetbets’ Denial of Hedge-Funding Hack Could Slow DeFi Boom

Last month’s market anarchy, where two-million-plus (at the time), day-trading individual investors unleashed the peer-to-peer power of social media to crush some of Wall Street’s top hedge funds, may indicate a coming use of existing legislative and regulatory methods to not only mitigate the ability of small investors to disrupt market, but, according to our…
What CEOs Need To Know About Bitcoin: Including potential new business models to consider

Bitcoin is the most famous crypto currency, with good reason. It was the first to leverage the new concept of a blockchain to enable a distributed, but trusted ledger, which for the first time in history allowed a cryptocurrency where double spending was impossible. Since its founding on 3 January 2009 the system has worked…
Engaging Start Ups and College Kids to solve DoD Problems

The National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) is one of the many innovation programs that have sprung up in the past few years to create opportunities for academia and technology start-ups to help solve DoD problems. Any DoD customer can approach NSIN with a problem set and ask them to help create a network of non-traditional…
Chief of Naval Operations Provides New Strategic Approach – Navigation Plan 2021

CNO NAVPLAN 2021 was released by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), ADM GILDAY, on 11 JAN. This Navigation Plan is basically the execution plan of the Advantages at Sea Tri-Service Maritime Strategy released last month. The Navy examines their current challenges and lays out four focus priorities: readiness, capabilities, capacity and Sailors. It begins…
Is Digital Advertising the ‘Mother of All Money Laundries?’

Online ad fraud cost global brands and media companies $42 billion in 2019. Losses are projected to approach $100 billion worldwide by 2023, according to UK-based consultants Juniper Research. The integrity of the digital advertising industry has never been more in doubt. Just as the U.S. Treasury singled out fraud as the leading predicate crime…

Briefs

AI Warfare Becomes Real for US Military With Project Maven

On a summer evening in 2020 at Fort Liberty, a sprawling US Army installation in North Carolina, soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps pored over satellite images on the computers in their command post. They weren’t the only ones looking. Moments earlier, an artificial intelligence program had scanned the pictures, with instructions to identify and…
Figure AI rides the humanoid robot hype wave to $2.6B valuation

Today Figure confirmed long-standing rumors that it’s been raising more money than God. The Bay Area-based robotics firm announced a $675 million. The Series B values the startup at $2.6 billion post-money. The lineup of investors is equally impressive. It includes Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions),…
Israeli plan to expand settlements helped trigger US shift in language

Israel’s announcement last week of its plan to add thousands of more homes to settlements located in the occupied West Bank resulted in a declaration of being “inconsistent” with international law by the Biden administration. In a response to a question at a news conference in Buenos Aires, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters…
Putin allies tell Macron: Any French troops you send to Ukraine will suffer fate of Napoleon’s army

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies cautioned French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday against sending troops to Ukraine, as any French troops in Ukraine would inevitably meet the same end as Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee in 1812 following their invasion of Russia, which ended in defeat. On Monday, French President Macron suggested the possibility of European…
China Says its coast guard patrols around Taiwan islands ‘beyond reproach’

On Wednesday, China’s government stated that its coast guard patrols were “beyond reproach” around Taiwanese islands located near the Chinese coast, and dispelled complaints regarding the boarding of a Taiwan tourist boat. Earlier this month China’s coast guard began regularly patrolling around the Kinmen islands, controlled by Taiwan. Last week Taiwan stated that a tourist…
North Korea’s first spy satellite is ‘alive’, can manoeuvre, expert says

On Tuesday, space experts stated that North Korea’s first spy satellite is “alive” following changes in the orbit, suggesting that North Korea gained successful control of the spacecraft after two previous failures. In November, North Korea was able to launch the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit. Between the week of February 19-24, the satellite conducted maneuvers…
Iran-Linked UNC1549 Hackers Target Middle East Aerospace & Defense Sectors

UNC1549, an Iran-nexus threat actor has been attributed, with medium confidence, to cyber attacks in the Middle East, including Israel and the U.A.E. targeting defense, aerospace, and aviation industries. Other possible targets include India, Turkey, and Albania. It is suspected that UNC1549 has been operating from June 2022 to February 2024. These attacks utilize spear-phishing…
White House Issues Executive Order on International Data Protection

President Biden has issued a new executive order with the goal of increasing the protection of personal information through the prevention of mass transfers of personal data to countries of concern. Companies that collect personal data have a tendency to sell the information to data brokers. There is worry regarding the reselling of sensitive data…
US Government Urges Cleanup of Routers Infected by Russia’s APT28

The US government is pleading with organizations and customers to clean devices to aid in the disruption effort two weeks after dismantling a botnet of Ubiquiti routers. These routers were used by a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) actor as a means of conducting global cyberespionage campaigns. Cybercriminals infected hundreds of small office/home office (SOHO)…
Pakistan swears in new parliament amid chaotic scenes, as Imran Khan’s party protests vote count

On Thursday, Pakistan’s National Assembly swore in its newly elected members. Allies of former Premier Imran Khan protested the “rigged election”. Lawmakers, members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party protested, shouting “vote-thief!”. These protests were directed at Shenbaz Sharif, who with his brother Nawaz Sharif, is expected to from the government. The oath for incoming legislators…
Tumblr and WordPress posts will reportedly be used for OpenAI and Midjourney training

Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly set to strike deals to sell user data to artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. 404 Media reports that the platforms’ parent company, Automattic, is nearing completion of an agreement to provide data to help train the AI companies’ models. It isn’t clear which data will be included, but the report…
Samsung unveils new memory chip with ‘highest-capacity to date’ for AI

Samsung Electronics on Tuesday said it has developed a new high-bandwidth memory chip that has the “highest-capacity to date” in the industry. The South Korean chip giant claimed the HBM3E 12H “raises both performance and capacity by more than 50%.” “The industry’s AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H…
India completes critical test for Gaganyaan flight crewed by humanoid robot later this year

India is steadily inching toward the first uncrewed flight in its human spaceflight program, Gaganyaan (Sanskrit for “celestial vehicle”). Early last week, the nation’s space agency successfully completed the final test to qualify the test flight’s rocket engine, approving it to be capable of safely ferrying astronauts to space. This engine test was the seventh of…
Apple just killed its electric car project, shifting focus to generative AI

Apple is canceling one of its open secret projects — building an autonomous electric car, and shifting most of the 2,000 employees working on it to focus on generative AI efforts instead. The internal announcement was made by Apple COO Jeff Williams and an Apple vice president leading the electric car project, Kevin Lynch, according…
Google CEO says Gemini AI diversity errors are ‘completely unacceptable’

The historically inaccurate images and text generated by Google’s Gemini AI have “offended our users and shown bias,” CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an internal memo obtained by The Verge. Last week, Google paused Gemini’s ability to generate images after it was widely discovered that the model generated racially diverse, Nazi-era German soldiers, US Founding…
Guinea junta appoints Mamadou Oury Bah as new prime minister

Former Guinean opposition leader Mamadou Oury Bah, also known as Bah Oury, has been appointed prime minister by the country’s military junta following the abrupt dissolution of the government. Amidst mounting discontent with the junta, marked by deadly clashes between police and protesters during a nationwide workers’ strike, trade unions have been advocating for lower…
Chad blames opposition for deadly attack on security agency

An attack on Chad’s National Security Agency resulted in multiple casualties, with the government asserting that the situation is now under control. The assault, which occurred shortly after the announcement of Chad’s presidential election scheduled for May 6, led to the arrest of members of the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF), who will face…
Villavicencio murder ‘planned from jail’ by Los Lobos gang – prosecutors

Prosecutors investigating the assassination of Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio revealed that his murder was orchestrated from within a jail, leading to requests for charges against six suspects – five Ecuadoreans and one Colombian. Villavicencio, known for his stance against criminal gangs, was fatally shot outside a campaign rally in Quito in August 2023, despite…
Alexei Navalny’s funeral to be held on Friday in Moscow

Alexei Navalny’s funeral is set to take place in Moscow on Friday, with a service planned at Borisovskoye Cemetery following a farewell ceremony at a local church. His widow, Yulia, expressed uncertainty about the event’s peacefulness, noting the possibility of police interference. Navalny, a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, passed away unexpectedly in an Arctic…
Chinese Cyberspies Use New Malware in Ivanti VPN Attacks

Chinese threat actors have persisted in exploiting recent Ivanti Connect Secure VPN vulnerabilities, as reported by Mandiant. Despite the flaws being patched on January 31, with one addressed earlier, attackers continued to exploit them, specifically targeting a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability (CVE-2024-21893) to deploy new malware families such as LittleLamb.WoolTea, PitStop, Pitdog, PitJet, and…
Hackers Steal Personal Information From Pharma Giant Cencora

Global pharmaceutical solutions provider Cencora revealed a cyberattack that compromised personal information from its systems, as disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 21. While the exact nature of the exfiltrated data and its ownership, whether employees or customers, remains unclear, Cencora stated that it has initiated containment measures…
US Bans Trading With Canadian Network Intelligence Firm Sandvine

The US government has placed Canadian network intelligence firm Sandvine on its Entity List, prohibiting organizations from trading with it due to concerns over its provision of deep packet inspection technology to the Egyptian government for mass surveillance and censorship purposes. Sandvine, based in Waterloo, Ontario, provides network policy control products used for congestion management,…
Damaged Subsea Cable in Red Sea Highlights Telecom Vulnerability

A subsea cable off the coast of Yemen that connects Europe to India has been damaged, and the telecommunications carrier that owns it must now figure out how to make underwater repairs in a war zone. Seacom Ltd., the South African company that controls the cable, detected a fault on Saturday, Chief Digital Officer Prenesh…
GitHub’s Copilot Enterprise hits general availability

GitHub today announced the general availability of Copilot Enterprise, the $39/month version of its code completion tool and developer-centric chatbot for large businesses. Copilot Enterprise includes all of the features of the existing Business plan, including IP indemnity, but extends this with a number of crucial features for larger teams. The highlight here is the…
Microsoft, OpenAI move to fend off genAI-aided hackers — for now

Of all the potential nightmares about the dangerous effects of generative AI (genAI) tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, one is near the top of the list: their use by hackers to craft hard-to-detect malicious code. Even worse is the fear that genAI could help rogue states like Russia, Iran, and North Korea unleash…
Founder of Softbank seeks $100bn war chest to build AI chip manufacturing unit

The founder of Softbank Group has reportedly set his sights on a new venture: a $100 billion AI chip company named Project Izanagi which could one day rival the dominance of AI leaders such as Nvidia, Intel and AMD. According to Bloomberg, Masayoshi Son says $30 billion of the required funding for Project Izanagi, which…
Female popes? Google’s amusing AI bias underscores a serious problem.

On Friday morning, when I first sat down to write this column, Google’s new Gemini AI was having problems that seemed mostly amusing. The internet had discovered that it would generally refuse to create pictures of any all-White groups, even in situations where it was clearly called for, such as “draw a picture of Nazis.”…
Gulf Region Accelerates Adoption of Zero Trust

Zero-trust security adoption will increase 10x in the Gulf region by the end of 2025. Critical infrastructure industries in the region are leading the way, including finance, oil and gas companies. It is estimated that 10% of large enterprises in the region will have comprehensive zero-trust programs in place in the next two years. A…
UAC-0184 Targets Ukrainian Entity in Finland With Remcos RAT

Threat actor UAC-0184 has used steganography techniques to deliver the Remcos RAT via a new malware known as the IDAT Loader to a Ukrainian target in Finland. The adversary initially targeted entities in Ukraine, however defenses thwarted the delivery of the payload. The alternate targets were then targeted. There were parallel campaigns allegedly by UAC-0148…
China Launches New Cyber-Defense Plan for Industrial Networks

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a new strategy for data security improvement in the nation’s industrial sector. The goal is to contain major risks and threats to the industrial sector by the end of 2026. The MIIT will implement protective measures that will be applied to more than 45,000 companies. The ministry…
Oil spill spreads across Caribbean from Tobago to Bonaire

Oil is leaking from a capsized barge off of the coast of Tobago and has spread across hundreds of miles to the island of Bonaire. Bonaire is located 50 miles north of the Venezuelan coast and officials there have said the oil poses a serious threat to both humans and nature. The barge ran aground…
Two people shot dead as Guinea protest turns bloody

Two people were shot dead in Conakry on Monday on the first day of an open-ended general strike against the military government that seized power in 2021. The military government has been accused of stifling dissent and the main unions have urged public and private sectors to strike for the release of a media activist,…
Macron says ‘nothing ruled out,’ including using Western troops, to stop Russia winning Ukraine war

French President Emmanuel Macron has discussed the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine to help Ukraine win the war against Russia. This would be a potential major escalation to the biggest ground war Europe has seen since World War II. The possibility of Western democracies putting troops on the ground remains remote, but Macron’s…
Nvidia launches RTX 500 and 1000 Ada Generation laptop GPUs for AI on the go

Nvidia launched its RTX 500 and 1000 Ada Generation laptop graphics processing units (GPUs) for on-the-go AI processing. These high-end GPUs use the Ada Lovelace architecture. They’re aimed at empowering content creators, researchers, and engineers with AI acceleration and graphics performance, even while working from portable devices. Nvidia made the announcement ahead of the Mobile…
Mistral AI releases new model to rival GPT-4 and its own chat assistant

Paris-based AI startup Mistral AI is gradually building an alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic as its latest announcement shows. The company is launching a new flagship large language model called Mistral Large. When it comes to reasoning capabilities, it is designed to rival other top-tier models, such as GPT-4 and Claude 2. In addition to Mistral…
Leadership In The Age Of AI: Use A Win-Win Philosophy

In this era of humans working with machines, being an effective leader with artificial intelligence (AI) takes a range of skills and activities. In this series, I provide an incisive roadmap for leadership in the age of AI. The promise of AI is that it will be transformative and valuable for all humans. To create…
Figure AI to Raise $675 Million for Human-Like Robots

Figure AI, a startup developing human-like robots, is reportedly in the process of raising $675 million in funding, with a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion. Among the investors are Jeff Bezos’ Explore Investments, Microsoft, Nvidia and an Amazon-affiliated fund, Bloomberg reported Friday (Feb. 23), citing unnamed sources. Other backers include Intel’s venture capital arm, LG Innotek,…
Microsoft partners with Mistral in second AI deal beyond OpenAI

Microsoft has announced a new multiyear partnership with Mistral, a French AI startup that’s valued at €2 billion (about $2.1 billion). The Financial Times reports that the partnership will include Microsoft taking a minor stake in the 10-month-old AI company, just a little over a year after Microsoft invested more than $10 billion into its…
‘Deepening occupation’: Turkey condemns Israel on last day of ICJ hearing

As the UN’s top court holds its final day of hearings, Turkey has joined a large number of countries that have condemned Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz said the long-running conflict could have been settled by now if international and human…
Israeli Jets Bomb Eastern Lebanon for the First Time Since Gaza War Began

Lebanese security officials say Israel has targeted eastern Lebanon for the first time since the war on Gaza started. Confirming the strikes, Israel’s army said its jets targeted sites used by Hezbollah for its aerial defense system, adding that they came “in response to the launch of a surface-to-air missile” that downed an Israeli drone…
U.S. and British Warplanes Again Strike Houthi-Linked Targets in Yemen

The United States and Britain carried out another round of large-scale military strikes on Saturday against multiple sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, U.S. officials said. Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand provided support for the operation. The strikes, which the statement called “necessary and proportionate,” hit 18 targets across eight…
Netanyahu Says Hostage Deal Would Delay, but Not Stop Rafah Invasion

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday that progress toward a deal for a temporary cease-fire and the release of some hostages held in Gaza would delay but not prevent an Israeli ground invasion for Rafah, as such an operation is essential to eliminating Hamas. However, Netanyahu states that Hamas would need to…
ScreenConnect Flaws Exploited to Deliver All Kinds of Malware (CVE-2024-1709, CVE-2024-1708)

ConnectWise ScreenConnect is a remote desktop solution consisting of server and client elements (applications). This makes it a popular solution for offering technical assistance or for remotely managing data centers. However, this is also what makes it a popular solution for attackers, who exploit it to easily access and compromise a great number of enterprise…
Critical Mac And iPhone Security Warning—Stop Doing These 3 Things Now

Researchers at Apple security and management specialists Jamf have published a new analysis that reveals why so many users are ill-equipped to combat the latest cyber threats impacting Macs and iPhones. Through examining real world user data, the researchers have issued a critical security warning involving three actions that are leaving users open to attack.…
White House Wades Into Debate on ‘Open’ Versus ‘Closed’ Artificial Intelligence Systems

The Biden administration is wading into a debate about whether the most powerful artificial intelligence systems should be publicly available for anyone to use and modify. The White House said Wednesday it is seeking public comment on the risks and benefits of having an AI system’s key components to be “open-source.” Tech companies are divided…
60% of OpenAI model’s responses contain plagiarism

A new report from plagiarism detector Copyleaks found that 60% of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 outputs contained some form of plagiarism. Why it matters: Content creators from authors and songwriters to The New York Times are arguing in court that generative AI trained on copyrighted material ends up spitting out exact copies. Copyleaks is an AI-based text analysis company…
Windows is getting its own Magic Eraser to AI-modify your photos

Google and Samsung aren’t the only ones baking magical AI selective photo erasers into their devices — they’re about to become table stakes for Windows PCs too. Microsoft has just announced Generative erase, a feature that lets you do similar things in the Photos app that comes bundled with Windows. While that may not be quite…
Nvidia Hardware Is Eating the World

Talking to Jenson Huang should come with a warning label. The Nvidia CEO is so invested in where AI is headed that, after nearly 90 minutes of spirited conversation, I came away convinced the future will be a neural net nirvana. I could see it all: a robot renaissance, medical godsends, self-driving cars, chatbots that…
Arm unveils Arm Neoverse CSS V3 chip designs for AI efficiency gains

In a leap forward for AI infrastructure, Arm announced the latest advancements in its Neoverse chip technology based on the Arm computing architecture. The company unveiled two new Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS) built on third-generation Neoverse intellectual property. Arm designs chips or parts of chips for other third-party chip designers and manufacturers. In this…
Microsoft releases its internal generative AI red teaming tool to the public

Despite the advanced capabilities of generative AI (gen AI) models, we have seen many instances of them going rogue, hallucinating, or having loopholes malicious actors can exploit. To help mitigate that issue, Microsoft is unveiling a tool that can help identify risks in generative AI systems. On Thursday, Microsoft released its Python Risk Identification Toolkit…
230k Individuals Impacted by Data Breach at Australian Telco Tangerine

Australian telecommunications provider Tangerine disclosed a recent cyberattack that compromised the personal information of approximately 230,000 individuals. The breach, discovered on February 20 but occurring on February 18, involved unauthorized access to a legacy customer database containing names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, mobile phone numbers, and Tangerine account numbers. However, sensitive data such…
‘SlashAndGrab’ ScreenConnect Vulnerability Widely Exploited for Malware Delivery

A critical vulnerability affecting ConnectWise’s ScreenConnect remote desktop access product has been exploited widely, leading to the delivery of ransomware and other malware. ConnectWise issued patches for the flaw, which allows an authentication bypass (CVE-2024-1709) and a path traversal issue (CVE-2024-1708), after being notified of in-the-wild exploitation attempts. Dubbed SlashAndGrab by Huntress, the flaws enable…
Apple Shortcuts Vulnerability Exposes Sensitive Information

A critical vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-23204, has been discovered in Apple Shortcuts, affecting both iOS and macOS users, allowing attackers to access sensitive information without user consent. Cybersecurity firm Bitdefender explains that the flaw enables the Shortcuts background process to bypass Apple’s Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework, even when operating within a sandbox environment.…
Toward Better Patching — A New Approach with a Dose of AI

Security teams face a daunting challenge in analyzing and prioritizing the predicted influx of 2,900 new vulnerabilities per month in 2024, making effective patching nearly impossible due to the sheer volume and complexity of known vulnerabilities. Coalition, a cyberinsurance firm, recognizes the urgent need to address this issue to reduce claims and increase profits, given…
Houthis Order ‘Ban’ on Israel, US and UK-linked Ships in the Red Sea

Yemen’s Houthis have announced they have “banned” vessels linked to Israel, the United States, and United Kingdom from sailing in surrounding seas, in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The warning came amid continuing Houthi attacks that have disrupted international trade on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia, and counterattacks by US and British…
Visiting Ukraine, Schumer Aims to Pressure G.O.P. to Take Up Aid Bill

The top Senate Democrat is leading a delegation to show solidarity as Ukraine fights off a Russian assault and to increase the pressure on Republicans to drop their opposition to additional U.S. aid. His trip to Ukraine comes at a critical time, as a foreign assistance package that includes more than $60 billion in military…
Israel Steps Up Attacks in Gaza Amid Cease-Fire Talks

On Thursday, Israel showed its intention to push into Rafah with ground forces if Hamas does not release hostages before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Nearly 100 people were killed across the enclave from Israeli strikes over the past day, the Gazan health authorities said on Thursday. On Wednesday night, Benny…
U.S. Imposes Major New Sanctions on Russia, Targeting Finance and Defense

As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, the Biden administration unveiled its largest sanctions package to date in response to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny. The sanctions target Russia’s financial sector and military-industrial complex in a broad effort to degrade the Kremlin’s war machine. With Congress struggling to reach an agreement on…
Intel unveils Intel Foundry with eye to AI and next-gen lithography manufacturing

Intel Corp. executives today detailed a new business vision for its foundry unit, freshly renamed Intel Foundry, and revealed the most advanced chip manufacturing process on the company’s technology roadmap. The process will be powered by High NA EUV machines from ASML Holdings NV. The machines, which are about the size of a double-decker bus and…
Stable Diffusion 3.0 debuts new diffusion transformation architecture to reinvent text-to-image gen

Stability AI is out today with an early preview of its Stable Diffusion 3.0 next-generation flagship text-to-image generative AI model. Stability AI has been steadily iterating and releasing multiple image models over the past year, each showing increasing levels of sophistication and quality. The SDXL release in July dramatically improved the Stable Diffusion base model…