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Thank you to the OODA Loop News Brief team for surfacing our initial report of this Volt Typhoon Zero Day attack – which occurs fast on the heels of a renewed, very specific warning that was just issued at Black Hat USA characterizing the recent CrowdStrike incident as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the impacts of…
There are things business and government executives should know about these new algorithms and what they mean for our collective future. This post captures what you need to know.
Built on the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) developed by Project Liberty Labs, Frequency gives people control of their own data, privacy, and safety. Together with MeWe, a privacy-first social media platform, they’re building a new internet that empowers users and gives them ownership over their digital identities.
At DEFCON 32, DARPA announced the AI Cyber Challenge finalist. Participants in the AIxCC “designed AI systems to secure open-source infrastructure software to be used in industries like financial services, utilities, and healthcare. Each finalist was awarded a $2 million prize.”
Beijing has been using its media to counter U.S. and foreign government accusations over its cyber spying for several years, typically issuing denials and pointing at the United States’ own alleged cyber malfeasance. It has been a standard method of operations – a government will accuse China of hacking, often publishing a report or issuing public proclamations with limited evidence…
Details of a recent report from the Treasury Department on AI-Specific Cybersecurity Risks in the Financial Sector.
The August 2024 OODA Network Monthly Meeting – held on Friday, August 16, 2024 –featured a discussion of the recent Black Hat USA 2024 and Defcon 32 events in Las Vegas by those members of the OODA Network who attended the events, along with questions from the larger network who were not in attendance.
On Friday, August 16, at 11:56 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched Transporter-11, SpaceX’s 11th dedicated smallsat rideshare program mission, from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Tanager-1’s payload included a cubesat built by San Francisco-based company Aethero, the first space-hardened Nvidia AI GPU built into the Aethero device, and Planet’s…
A Congressionally mandated bi-partisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy has provided actionable recommendations pointing to shifts in U.S. strategy: Here is what you need to know.
In the spirit of the significance of tracking the global impact of disruptive events and encouraging the sharing of relevant stories for compilation, the following is our latest tracking of the Crowdstrike Incident since our last update on 7/22 – The Crowdstrike/Microsoft Global IT Outage Debacle: Ongoing Impacts and Recent Updates and the July 2024…
There is little doubt that China and Russia’s relationship will continue to deepen. Here is more context and opinion on what that means.
CISA Director Jen Easterly participated in a keynote session at Black Hat USA 2024 to “unpack how international leaders are approaching election security risks to the democratic processes.” Along with coverage of this keynote panel, we have compiled Director Easterly’s recent communications on the 2024 security threats and security and integrity strategies taken up by…
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has finalized its principal set of encryption algorithms designed to withstand cyberattacks from a quantum computer.
The Federal Ruling against Google is finally part of the tipping point, as many have been waiting for a much-needed wave of judicial and legislative activity to begin strengthening the U.S. cognitive infrastructure and cleaning up the information ecosystem. Details of the ruling can be found in this post.
Recent reporting reveals that the United Nations (UN) will soon hold their final negotiation meeting on its new Cybercrime Treaty.
A Massachusetts healthcare provider was the victim of a data breach. the Massachusetts based healthcare provider Mammography Impacts was the victim of a data breach. The provider has estimated that 350,000 people had their personal information compromised by the breach. The organization disclosed that an unauthorized individual gained access to an internal email account which allowed…
A major South Korean Telecoms provider has disclosed that it was hacked. SK Telecom has disclosed that it was hacked in April of this year. An investigation found that the hackers were able to deploy a malware program into their internal system. There is not currently any information which suggests that this was an attempted…
Anew study claims that AI models like ChatGPT and Claude now outperform PhD-level virologists in problem-solving in wet labs, where scientists analyze chemicals and biological material. This discovery is a double-edged sword, experts say. Ultra-smart AI models could help researchers prevent the spread of infectious diseases. But non-experts could also weaponize the models to create…
Microsoft announced today a major expansion of its artificial intelligence tools with the “Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 Spring release,” introducing new AI “agents” designed to function as digital colleagues that can perform complex workplace tasks through deep reasoning capabilities. In an exclusive interview, Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer of Experiences and Devices at Microsoft,…
U.S. Marines will test one of the service’s newest counter-drone defense systems during this year’s Balikatan military exercise in collaboration with the Philippine military, according to the Marine Corps. Marines with the 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion’s Ground-Based Air Defense Battery will conduct live-fire training with the ground-based Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, a…
Scientists have developed the world’s first operating system designed for quantum computers, which could let quantum computers connect with each other, thereby paving the way for a quantum internet. An operating system, such as Microsoft Windows or Apple iOS, is the program responsible for managing every other application on a computer. However, most quantum computers…
Nvidia Corp. today announced the general availability of NeMo microservices, a set of tools designed to assist developers get artificial intelligence agents up faster by tapping into AI inference and information systems at scale. Agents have become a focal point for creating “digital teammates” capable of driving workforce productivity for knowledge and service workers by…
China’s secret weapon in the trade war is an army of factory robots, powered by artificial intelligence, that have revolutionized manufacturing. Factories are being automated across China at a breakneck pace. With engineers and electricians tending to fleets of robots, these operations are bringing down the cost of manufacturing while improving quality. As a result,…
After thousands of AI proof-of-concept projects have died on the vine, many organizations are scaling back internal efforts in favor of adopting commercial, off-the-shelf AI tools. About half of companies surveyed by Gartner in late 2023 were developing their own AI tools, but the number fell to about 20% at the end of 2024, says…
Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara spoke with the New York Times this month, speaking about his desire for foreign support. Al-Shara hopes to persuade Western officials to lift sanctions on his country and provide military assistance to build a new army and prevent another Syrian civil war. He additionally is in need of foreign financing to…
A planned meeting in London to discuss a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire has been postponed by the UK’s Foreign Office. Diplomats from the US, Ukraine, France, Germany, and the UK along with other senior officials had been expected to attend the talks. Ukraine’s foreign minister and the UK’s foreign secretary are still planning to meet. The discussions…
European weapon makers are finding new business as the continent begins to look more towards domestic investment, instead of spending on foreign military products. With President Trump’s trade war, European countries are looking inward to build their defenses. Trump has additionally demanded that European countries stop their reliance on the US for security. The new…
The World Food Program (WFP) is suspending aid for 650,000 women and children in Ethiopia. The UN agency has warned that a lack of funding may cause 3.6 million people in Ethiopia overall to risk losing access to food aid soon, unless new financial aid is approved. The WFP will stop its aid delivery in…
Threat actors suspected to be linked to Russia are targeting Ukrainian individuals and organizations, aiming to gain access to Microsoft 365 accounts. The campaign targeting Ukrainian allies began in early March 2025 and features social engineering operations such as device code phishing. The attackers attempt to convince their victim to click a link and send…
In 2024, researchers observed an 84% increase in phishing emails which delivered infostealers compared to the year before. This is a method that threat actors rely on heavily to scale identity attacks. 70% of attacks in 2024 involved critical infrastructure, and malware was deployed in 40% of cases. Nearly one third of incidents in 2024…
Healthcare organizations are being consistently targeted by ransomware actors, and three big organizations operating in the sector this week suffered attacks. A dialysis firm, DaVita, was first impacted by a ransomware attack on April 12. Then, on April 14, Bell Ambulance of Milwaukee disclosed a data security incident. The Medusa ransomware group had claimed an…
A city in Texas had to take its systems offline after a cyberattack. In Abilene, some of the city’s internal network systems went unresponsive, and the city quickly launched an immediate incident response plan. All critical assets and systems impacted by the attack were taken offline to secure the network. The attack began last week…
Economic gains from artificial intelligence will boost global output by around 0.5% a year between 2025 and 2030, outweighing the costs of rising carbon emissions by the data centres needed to run AI models, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. An IMF report released at its annual spring meeting in Washington nonetheless noted that…
“Economic security and national security are almost directly related in the long run,” said J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon last week on Fox Business. He’s right. We need to stop pretending our adversaries are business partners. The pharmaceutical sector is a cornerstone of America’s global competitiveness, but without a serious shift in how we treat…
Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics has opened a new factory in Hangzhou as it races to meet soaring demand amid China’s craze for the human-shaped machines. The factory, launched earlier this year, spans over 10,000 square metres, and it is expected to support the company’s expansion over the next three to five years, according…
HavocAI will soon launch a 38-foot autonomous vessel to complement its smaller drone boats, which have already caught the Pentagon’s eye. There’s a military hunger, at home and abroad, for all things unmanned. Havoc is one of the youngest on the scene. It was co-founded last year by Paul Lwin, a Myanmar refugee and former…
Rotem Bashi, a colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, says he just “can’t understand how this miracle was done.” Bashi is the commander of the IDF’s Matzpen software development unit, whose artificial intelligence system has greatly impressed him. “When I compare the quality of the answer from the system with the raw information it received,…
Fujitsu Limited and RIKEN today announced the development of a world-leading 256-qubit superconducting quantum computer, established at the RIKEN RQC-FUJITSU Collaboration Center. This new quantum computer builds upon the advanced technology of the 64-qubit iteration, launched with the support of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)(1) in October 2023, and…
Anthropic expects AI-powered virtual employees to begin roaming corporate networks in the next year, the company’s top security leader told Axios in an interview this week. Managing those AI identities will require companies to reassess their cybersecurity strategies or risk exposing their networks to major security breaches. Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation…
Iran has stated that it plans to brief China this week in preparation for its third round of talks with the US over its nuclear program. Iranian officials are separately accusing Israel of attempting to undermine the negotiations. The trip will be similar to Iranian visits with Russia last week before the second round of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he is open to the idea of holding direct talks with Ukraine over the conflict between the two countries. On Monday, Putin spoke to Russian state TV and said that he had a “positive attitude towards any peace initiatives.” The two nations have not held bilateral talks since…
The Chinese government is warning other countries not to curb their trade with China to win favor with the US and avoid American tariffs. China is promising to retaliate against countries that do this. The announcement comes after reports that the Trump administration is trying to pressure other foreign countries to slow their trade with…
On Monday, the Vatican announced the passing of Pope Francis at 88 years old. His cause of death was a cerebral stroke, leading to a coma and heart failure. Now, the process will begin to find a new leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. The Pope’s death comes just one day after he appeared…
The UN is reporting that organized cybercrime groups originating from Asia are spreading scams across the rest of the globe. For several years, scam centers located in Southeast Asia have stolen billions of dollars from victims. Now, their actions are reported to be expanding farther, reaching Africa and Latin America. The groups are attempting to…
As a result of cyber threats and fraud, businesses are losing on average $98.5 million a year. Technology companies are suffering the most, followed by insurance, financial services, and fintech. According to research from FIS and Oxford Economics, 37% of respondents said that their company experiences cyber threats every day. Respondents were dissatisfied with their…
Elusive Comet, a new hacking group, is using social engineering through Zoom to target cryptocurrency users. The campaign is being tracked by researchers at the Open Security Alliance. The attackers trick their victims into installing malware on their computers, enabling them to steal the victim’s cryptocurrency once they gain access to the device. The group…
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. listed the challenges of ensuring export control compliance by its customers, months after the company’s artificial intelligence silicon was found to have flowed to US-sanctioned Huawei Technologies Co. via intermediaries. “TSMC’s role in the semiconductor supply chain inherently limits its visibility and information available to it regarding the downstream use or…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…
In a rather clever attack, hackers leveraged a weakness that allowed them to send a fake email that seemed delivered from Google’s systems, passing all verifications but pointing to a fraudulent page that collected logins. The attacker leveraged Google’s infrastructure to trick recipients into accessing a legitimate-looking “support portal” that asks for Google account credentials.…
The allure of quantum computers is, at its heart, quite simple: by leveraging counterintuitive quantum effects, they could perform computational feats utterly impossible for any classical computer. But reality is more complex: to date, most claims of quantum “advantage”—an achievement by a quantum computer that a regular machine can’t match—have struggled to show they truly…
China’s humanoid robot manufacturers are charging full steam ahead to mass production, which a new report said would boost the total value of automata made on the mainland this year to about 4.5 billion yuan (US$616 million). Six out of 11 domestic humanoid robot makers, which had set their mass production initiatives in 2024, plan…
Amid today’s AI boom, it’s disconcerting that we still don’t know how to measure how smart, creative, or empathetic these systems are. Our tests for these traits, never great in the first place, were made for humans, not AI. Plus, our recent paper testing prompting techniques finds that AI test scores can change dramatically based…
Huawei Technologies plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said. Some shipments have already been made, they added. The timing is fortuitous for Chinese AI companies which have been left scrambling for domestic alternatives to the…
Iran and the U.S. concluded a new round of talks Saturday in Rome in what Iranian officials described as a step forward, and opening the way for further talks next week. Iran was planning before the Saturday meeting to set out a series of proposals for a new nuclear pact. In addition to the guarantees,…
Ukraine has been presented with a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for how to end the war in Ukraine by granting concessions to Russia, including potential U.S. recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and excluding Kyiv from joining NATO. Ukraine is under pressure to respond this week to these ideas. Kyiv’s response is…
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of breaching an “Easter truce” announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine said was being violated from the moment it started. In a surprise announcement on Saturday, Putin ordered his forces to “stop all military activity” along the front line in the war against Ukraine, citing humanitarian…
The United States has carried out more air strikes in Yemen’s capital Sanaa. In Sanaa, two US airstrikes targeted the area of Attan, which has been controlled by the rebel movement since 2014. Houthi-held areas in Yemen have been subjected to near-daily air strikes by Washington. US President Donald Trump’s administration said the air strikes…
An October 2024 study by Software AG suggests that half of all employees are Shadow AI users, and most of them wouldn’t stop even if it was banned. The problem is the ease of access to AI tools. Seven percent of employees are already using these Chinese AI models. Enterprises need to have proactive control…
California-based data protection startup Cy4Data Labs on Thursday announced raising $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Pelion Venture Partners. Cy4Data Labs has built a solution that can protect data across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments. The company also provides a key management system, as well as real-time threat detection. Cy4Data Labs…
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every…
It’s considered a scientific landmark: A 1975 meeting at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, shaped a new safety regime for recombinant DNA, ensuring that researchers would apply caution to gene splicing. Those ideas have been so useful that in the decades since, when new topics in scientific safety arise, there are still…
Recent disruptions in key trade routes, from commercial shipping issues in the Red Sea to automotive production delays following floods in Europe, have exposed weaknesses in our supply chains. Traditional automation has delivered efficiency gains but introduced a hidden fragility: Systems that work perfectly within normal parameters can still break down exactly when we need…
The rolling billows of the escalating trade war between China and the US are now lapping at the shores of the emergent humanoid robotics industry, threatening to derail Tesla’s bold vision of mass-producing its Optimus robot. The company’s ambitious goal of keeping the robot’s production price at US$20,000 could be unattainable without access to China’s…
Inside a secretive set of buildings in Santa Barbara, California, scientists at Alphabet are working on one of the company’s most ambitious bets yet. They’re attempting to develop the world’s most advanced quantum computers. “In the future, quantum and AI, they could really complement each other back and forth,” said Julian Kelly, director of hardware…
Artificial intelligence’s power-hungry nature has earned it a reputation as a climate pariah. Training a single model can use more electricity than 100 US homes in an entire year. As the world’s demand for AI grows, so will data centers’ energy consumption, which is projected to more than double by 2030, according to the International…
Google has launched Gemini 2.5 Flash, a major upgrade to its AI lineup that gives businesses and developers unprecedented control over how much “thinking” their AI performs. The new model, released today in preview through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, represents a strategic effort to deliver improved reasoning capabilities while maintaining competitive pricing in…
Large portions of Haiti’s population face hunger as violence continues in the country. Significant portions of Haiti’s population face hunger as violence continues in the country. Gang violence in the country has continued to grow as efforts to combat the power of gangs have failed. International aid to Haiti has also come under stress as…
Israel has annouced they will continue their operations in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister has annouced that Israel will continue its operations in Gaza. He said that the war must continue until all hostages have been released and Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel. Negotiations between Hamas and Israel have laregely stalled as both…
Former President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kabila has returned to the country. The Former President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Joseph Kabila has returned to the Country. He arrived to the city of Goma which is in the country’s east and is currently under the control of rebel forces. The…
Hezbollah will not disarm until Israel withdraws forces from Lebanon. Hezbollah has annouced that they will not begin disarmament until Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon. This annoucement comes after the United States urged Lebanon’s government to assert full control over the country. This statement was understoood by many to mean that the Lebanon should fully…
Samsung phones save passwords in plain text after they are copied. Samsung phones have been found to save passwords in plain text after they are copied. The phones also do not delete information from the clipboard which means the plain text data is stored forever. Samsung has said that they will work to address the…
Ahold Delhaize has confirmed that data was stolen during a ransomware attack. Dutch food company, Ahold Delhaize, has confirmed that data was stolen during a ransomware attack. Brands owned by the company were also impacted by the breach. The company confirmed that the attackers were able to extract files from their system. The company has…
Legends International has confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack. The event management company Legends International has confirmed that it was the vicitm of a cyber attack. The company has disclosed that over 8,000 people have been impacted by the breach. The company has said that they do not believe that any…
The FTC has found that $470 million have been lost to scam text messages. The FTC has found that over $470 million have been lost to scam text messages. Text messages scams have been more common and increasingly complex in recent years. Common scams are the “fraud alter” and “employment” scams. These scams involve an…
As tensions with a combative China rise, the U.S. is looking at the commercial market to modernize with new military technology applications, speakers at a Future of Defense event said. President Trump issued an executive order last week that aims to ramp up innovation and production capabilities across aviation, shipbuilding and more. Axios’ Colin Demarest…
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