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On all accounts, it appears that the U.S. government is making a real effort to maintain its advantage in cyberspace. Hunt forward operations have been an innovative practice that has the potential to reduce the adversary footprint in cyberspace by merging international cooperation with the ability to proactively locate and counter adversaries in the regions…
In the OODA Almanac 2022, OODA CEO Matt Devost provided our initial position for the exploration of “Autonomous Everything” throughout the 2022 calendar year of OODA Loop research and analysis: “Every year more robots enter our businesses and private lives. Emerging examples include Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) capability (which leverages advanced computer vision, machine…
Reshoring is the transfer of business operations back to its country of origin. The term is usually associated with manufacturing but it applies to any business operation. The trend of reshoring back to the US from China began about a decade ago when some businesses realized costs in China (including labor and compliance and also…
We have another crucial update on what has been characterized as “the greatest cryptographic migration in history.” National Security Memorandum (NSM) 8, “Improving the Cybersecurity of National Security, Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Systems” was released in January, and was followed up by the Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act. We provided an initial analysis of…
In March, we extended our tracking of minerals for semiconductor production to the annual Unites States Geological Survey (USGS) 2022 List of Critical Minerals, which includes minerals like Palladium, C4F6, Helium, and Scandium – all of which are used in semiconductor production and or the manufacturing of sensors and memory. In April, we provided a…
On March 17th, CISA and the FBI issued a Joint Cybersecurity Advisory for the SATCOM ecosystem, following the cyberattack on the Viasat Satellite system. That same week, OODA Loop contributor Emilio Iasiello provided an analysis of satellite security in the context of overall cybersecurity: “The cyber threat to satellites has been a longstanding concern and…
There are so many important headlines we do not want to get lost ‘below the fold’ for our membership, and this update is one of those headlines. On March 2nd, the Senate unanimously passed the Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act. A vital piece of the consolidated legislation was a cyber incident reporting bill. On March 11th, lawmakers…
We strongly encourage every company, large or small, to set aside dedicated time to focus on ways to improve your ability to understand the nature of the significantly changed risk environment we are all operating in today, and then assess how your organizational thinking should change. As an aid to assessing your corporate sensemaking abilities,…
In a famous line from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a character in the story is asked how he went bankrupt. His reply: “Two ways… gradually, then suddenly.” This line is a catchy way to articulate the way compounding interest works in finance. It is also a good description for the S-Curve that is so…
Since yesterday, on the day when a new president took the helm in Costa Rica, a state of emergency was declared in the country based on the impact cyber-attack by the Russia-affiliated Conti Ransomware Gang. Following is what the journalist trade calls a “tic-toc” of the incident – with a formative analysis of mitigation efforts…
In May 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the creation of a Disinformation Governance Board, a new internal working group within DHS with the mission of ensuring these protections are “appropriately incorporated across DHS’ disinformation-related work and that rigorous safeguards are in place.” Per a fact sheet released by DHS, this group will…
The Department of State is offering a reward of up to $10,000,000 for information leading to the identification and/or location of any individual(s) who hold a key leadership position in the Conti ransomware variant transnational organized crime group. In addition, the Department is also offering a reward of up to $5,000,000 for information leading to…
Since our expanded coverage in July of last year of Project Pegasus – a cadre of global news organization’s exhaustive investigation of the Pegasus “zero click” surveillance software – there have been many developments related to the spyware – including legal, national security and geopolitical activities pointed directly at the NSO Group (the Israel-based developer…
OODA Loop readers will know more than most the two biggest uses of the term “Open Source.” We frequently write about both. In the context of intelligence, Open Source means information that does not come from classified channels. In terms of software, Open Source means software developed and managed in an open way, generally using…
It is still very early in the cryptocurrency revolution, but Bitcoin, Ethereum and other related projects have now generated a combined market cap of over $1.6 Trillion Dollars, a signal of heft in this new of the economy. Estimates of the numbers of people using cryptocurrency vary widely, but there could be up to 20%…
Last weekend, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was allegedly raped, leading to an outcry against increasing antisemitism in the country. This has become a key issue in the upcoming French parliamentary elections this month. French President Emmanuel Macron has responded by denouncing this surge of antisemitism in French schools. There were over 360 antisemitic incidents in…
Present Biden declared an immediate ban on Kaspersky software in the U.S., beginning with the sale of the software and continuing with a ban of its use in late September. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) found that Kaspersky software poses “unacceptable risks to the United States’ national security.” The risks involved with the…
France’s information security agency ANSSI has revealed that French diplomatic entities were targeted by Russian-linked actors. These attacks have been attributed to a group tracked as Midnight Blizzard. This actor is closely related to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). These attacks involve phishing emails sent to French public organizations from foreign institutions. The phishing…
A multi-year espionage campaign targeting Asian telecom companies has now been attributed to Chinese state hackers. The campaign has been active since at least 2021 and has targeted telecom operators, universities, and a company providing services to telcos. The attackers used custom backdoors including Coolclient, Quickheal, and Rainyday, all previously associated with Chinese threat actors.…
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) data was possibly leaked after an attack in January 2024. In the attack, hackers exploited an Ivanti Connect Secure appliance zero-day to access CISA’s tool. It is believed that the attack may have impacted over 100,000 individuals. CISA states that…
Like it or hate it, artificial intelligence — especially generative AI — is the technology story of 2024. OpenAI, with its rollouts of viral services like ChatGPT and billions in funding, may have gobbled up the lion’s share of attention and money so far. But according to a new report out from top VC Accel and…
OpenAI rival Anthropic is releasing a powerful new generative AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet. But it’s more an incremental step than a monumental leap forward. Claude 3.5 Sonnet can analyze both text and images as well as generate text, and it’s Anthropic’s best-performing model yet — at least on paper. Across several AI benchmarks for…
Around a decade ago, as AI gained renewed attention, one of the first areas to receive overinflated focus were business process automation and desktop automation tools that aimed to automate repetitive user interface interactions. These tools, known as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), started as humble tools for automating repetitive user interface interactions, like keyboard and…
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist, is starting a new AI company focused on safety. In a post on Wednesday, Sutskever revealed Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), a startup with “one goal and one product:” creating a safe and powerful AI system. The announcement describes SSI as a startup that “approaches safety and capabilities…
Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computer will provide server racks for the supercomputer that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is building, the U.S. businessman said on social media platform X on Wednesday. Dell is assembling half of the racks for xAI’s supercomputer, Musk said on X. In a reply to another post enquiring about…
An agreement made between North Korea and Russia now required the countries to use “all available means” to provide military assistance immediately in the event of war. According to the North Korean Central News Agency, the language of the strategic partnership agreement includes an article that serves as a trigger clause for initiating mutual defense…
A Non-human identity (NHI) lifecycle firm known as Entro Security raised $18 million in a series A funding round. The funding round, led by Dell Technologies Capital with the help of angel investors will be used to build up the firm’s global operations. This funding will also be used to increase the firm’s employee availability…
On Wednesday, the Philippine military chief demanded that China pay for damages, and return several rifles, and equipment seized by the Chinese coast guard following an assault in the South China Sea. The assault occurred in a disputed shoal, wherein Chinese personnel on board over eight motorboats rammed into two Philippine navy inflatable boats repeatedly,…
U.S., New Zealand, and Canadian government agencies have all published new guidance for organizations to adopt as a means of improving robust security solutions and granting greater visibility into network activity. The document, titled. Modern Approaches to Network Access Security (PDF) outlines modern solutions to security challenges. The document includes Secure Service Edge (SSE) and…
On Wednesday, Australia’s main opposition party announced its plan to build Australia’s first nuclear power plants as early as 2035. The opposition party argued that the government’s decarbonization policies through renewable energy sources are infeasible. The announcement of the nuclear power plants will create a mass division between the major parties on the approach Australia…
This week Massachusetts faced a statewide outage of the 911 emergency response system, caused by an errant firewall. The firewall prevented calls from actually going through to the 911 dispatch centers. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security described the issue as being “technical” in nature. The 911 vendor Comtech relayed that the…
Over the course of this month, around 9,000 troops from 20 NATO countries are participating in military exercises across the Baltic Sea. The region of the Baltic Sea has become strategically important due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sweden also participated in the exercises as a full member since joining NATO earlier this year. Training…
Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation, is expressing major concern in regard to a European Union proposal. The European Union’s proposal suggests scanning users’ private messages for the detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). However, according to Whittaker, the EU’s proposal poses potential threats to end-to-end encryption. In a statement, Whittaker explained the…
Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company following a staggering rally in its shares, underlining the outsized role investors expect artificial intelligence to play in the global economy over coming years. Nvidia shares rose 3.5% on Tuesday, giving it a market value of about $3.34 trillion. That pushed the semiconductor bellwether past Microsoft and…
Few figures stand out like Mira Murati, the CTO of OpenAI. Lauded by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for her ability to blend technical expertise with commercial insight and a visionary outlook, Murati was credited with helming transformative AI projects at OpenAI such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and GPT-4. At the Qualtrics X4 conference in May, she…
Last month, The New York Times claimed that tech giants OpenAI and Google have waded into a copyright gray area by transcribing the vast volume of YouTube videos and using that text as additional training data for their AI models despite terms of service that prohibit such efforts and copyright law that the Times argues…
Foundation models have made great advances in robotics, enabling the creation of vision-language-action (VLA) models that generalize to objects, scenes, and tasks beyond their training data. However, the adoption of these models has been limited due to their closed nature and the lack of best practices for deploying and adapting them to new environments. To…
So far, generative AI has been mostly confined to chatbots like ChatGPT. Startups like Character.AI and Replika are seeing early traction by making chatbots more like companions. But what happens when you dump a bunch of AI characters into something that looks like Instagram and let them talk to each other? That’s the idea behind…
On Tuesday afternoon, Putin arrived in North Korea for the first time in 24 years. His arrival follows talks over the past weeks negotiating a meeting between Putin and Kim Jong Un, aiming to strengthen partnerships between Russia and North Korea. The war against Ukraine has caused Putin to lean more upon Mr. Kim, whose…
UN reports show credible evidence that the United Arab Emirates has been supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. Late Tuesday, Sudan’s UN ambassador Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed accused the UAE of arming the RSF. The Sudanese government plans to submit a file on UAE actions to the International Criminal Court with…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling out the U.S. government for continuing to withhold weapons from Israel. Netanyahu claims that the U.S. promised to work to remove restrictions, but the U.S. is still reviewing bomb shipments to Israel. The U.S. has continued to withhold weapon shipments to the Israeli military among concerns about civilian…
Rising tensions between Israel and Lebanon have led Israeli officials to state that they are prepared for an “all-out war” in Lebanon. Officials additionally state that the country has plans approved for an offensive targeting Hezbollah. These claims follow Hezbollah’s recent release of threatening drone footage showing civilian areas, a weapons manufacturing complex, and missile…
Trump’s 2024 presidential fundraising campaign has provided hackers with opportunities to create new frauds. Two recent developments during the campaign have given these new opportunities to attackers. The first is the Trump campaign’s decision to accept cryptocurrency donations, and the second was Trump’s conviction of 34 felony charges. Surges in donations to Trump’s campaign surrounding…
Following Blackbaud’s ransomware attack in June 2020, the company has now been ordered to pay $6.75 million to the California Attorney General’s Office. The payment was mandated due to Blackbaud’s poor security practices, ultimately leading to the ransomware attack and data breach in May 2020. During the attack, hackers gained access to Social Security numbers,…
Attackers are tricking people into cutting and pasting malware, infecting their own machines. These actors are using fake browser updates and software fixes to trick users into copying and pasting PowerShell scripts containing malware strains. The malware uploaded to the victims’ computers includes remote access Trojans (RATs) and infostealers. There are two ongoing campaigns that…
AMD is currently investigating a potential breach after the hacker IntelBroker announced that it was selling AMD’s sensitive data. The announcement was made on the BreachForums cybercrime forum. The sensitive data allegedly includes customer and employee databases, information about future AMD products, source code, and more. IntelBroker shared multiple screenshots, attempting to prove his claims.…
On Monday, the Kremlin stated that a remark made by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg stating that the NATO military alliance was holding talks on the decision to deploy more nuclear weapons was “an escalation of tension”. Stoltenberg told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that NATO members were in the process of consulting over nuclear weapons decisions. The…
NVIDIA, known for its technological innovations, has revealed a new approach to managing complex supply chains using its NIM (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) technology. According to the NVIDIA Technical Blog, this development leverages advanced AI to streamline operations and mitigate disruptions. The announcement highlights a four-minute video showcasing how NVIDIA’s AI planner, built on NIM technology,…
Adobe has announced a significant upgrade to the AI Assistant feature in Acrobat, the company’s popular PDF editing software. This update comes after the Assistant’s launch in February, which introduced AI-generated summaries and a chatbot that can answer questions about the contents of massive documents. Adobe is making this chatbot more capable starting tomorrow, adding…
OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT keeps expanding with new features. It now offers a store — the GPT Store — for AI-powered applications and services. The recently introduced memories feature lets you save preferences so that chats are more tailored to you. And soon, ChatGPT will gain an upgraded voice mode, letting you interact with…
Investment in Europe’s defence technology is intensifying after NATO on Tuesday confirmed its first deep tech investments as part of a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) fund that aims to address today’s defence, security and resilience challenges. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation announced the fund in 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The NATO Innovation Fund…
Ever get your McDonald’s order mixed up at an AI-powered drive-thru? The experiment behind the fast food giant’s current automated order taker will soon be coming to a close. McDonald’s confirmed late Monday that it decided to end a global partnership with IBM, which has been testing this artificial intelligence technology at select McDonald’s drive-thrus since…
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved the six-member war cabinet according to an Israeli official. The dissolution of the war cabinet was widely expected in the wake of the exit of former general Benny Gantz from the government. After dissolving the war cabinet, Netanyahu is expected to consult a small group of ministers…
Russia’s trial for the detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will be held behind closed doors, announced by the trial court on Monday. Gershkovich, 32, was detained on March 29, 2023, on charges of espionage. Gershkovich was detained by the Federal Security Service in a steak house in the city of Yekaterinburg. He flatly…
On Monday, U.S. and British forces executed a minimum of six airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah International Airport, with an additional four strikes on Kamaran Island near the port of Salif off the Red Sea. This news was reported by Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet that is operated by Yemen’s Houthi movement on Monday.…
A China-nexus cyber espionage actor has been suspected and attributed to a prolonged attack against an unnamed organization in East Asia. The attack ran over a period of three years, and the threat actor was able to maintain the operation by using legacy F5 BIG-IP appliances as a method of command and control (C&C) for…
Threat actors have been observed utilizing malware called NiceRAT as a means of co-opting infected devices into a botnet. The attacks have targeted South Korean users and are designed to deploy the malware using the cover of cracked software. Cracked software can include Microsoft Windows and other tools that license Microsoft Office. An alternative distribution…
The AI Risk Summit brings together both business and government stakeholders as a means of fostering important dialogue on risk management and cybersecurity and AI governance. The AI Risk Summit intends to drive the conversation forward through the use of real-world examples as a means of providing guidance on risk management and cybersecurity and Artificial…
The printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) manufacturing firm Keytronic has disclosed the presence of a data breach after a ransomware gang published its stolen information. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stated that the breach happened on May 6 and resulted in network disruptions. In order to ensure that no…
Artificial intelligence has become this year’s wonder technology. But because it comes in a lot of different flavors from a lot of different companies, it can be really confusing. You’ve not only got the ChatGPT bot created by OpenAI, but you’ve got the big three — Google, Apple, and Microsoft — cooking up their own…
OpenAI just leaped forward in the AI race through its partnership with Apple, announced at this week’s WWDC24 conference. Apple will install ChatGPT in its operating systems and Siri, impacting more than 2 billion active devices worldwide. This extends the reach of OpenAI, which already had approximately 180 million active users, not to mention the…
The history of robots in manufacturing goes back to 1962, when a 4,000-pound, one-armed robot named Unimate was installed at a GM plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift and stack hot pieces of metal. It was a revolution in manufacturing, but only the first of many. Today, the integration of AI in manufacturing promises…
New York City-based Runway ML, also known as Runway, was among the earliest startups to focus on realistic high-quality generative AI video creation models. But following the debut of its Gen-1 model in February 2023 and Gen-2 in June 2023, the company has since seen its star occluded by other highly realistic AI video generators,…
Artificial intelligence is a feature, not a product, and like every other technology, it’s starting to fade into the background. Apple last week announced that it is embedding generative AI technology into Siri and other applications in iPhones, including a deal with OpenAI. Most Google searches now include an AI Overview. Microsoft has branded Copilot+…
China views the “annexation” and “elimination” of Taiwan as its great national cause, Taiwan’s President William Lai Ching-te said. Since assuming office last month, Beijing has branded Lai as a “separatist”. China also deployed aircraft in Taiwan’s airspace and staged a major military drill around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration. In a speech on Sunday,…
As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third time as his country’s leader on June 9, seven counterparts from neighboring nations joined a very select audience in marking the moment. But there was one big difference from 2014: Missing from the lineup of visiting leaders was the prime minister of Pakistan.…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to plans announced by the military to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip to facilitate aid delivery into the Palestinian enclave. Netanyahu’s opposition to the tactical pauses underlined political tensions over the issue of aid…
Meeting in Switzerland, Scores of countries joined Ukraine on Sunday in calling for “dialogue between all parties” to end the war with Russia. But Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he remained steadfast in opposing any negotiations that could require his country to cede territory. At the end of the meeting, most of the delegations signed…
Retired U.S. Army General and former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Paul M. Nakasone has joined the Board of Directors at artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. OpenAI says Nakasone’s insights will “contribute to OpenAI’s efforts to better understand how AI can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by quickly detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats.” Under General…
Pakistan-based threat actors have been observed targeting government entities in India as part of two espionage campaigns, according to security researchers at Cisco Talos and Volexity. One of the campaigns, called Operation Celestial Force, has been ongoing since at least 2018, relying on both Android and Windows malware to target individuals in the Indian defense,…
By being quiet in the race for the biggest and most rad foundation models, many people assumed that Apple didn’t have anything to contribute to the AI race. After their new announcements, many in the heart of the AI labs still will argue this, forecasting that a marginal lead on language model performance has an…
The cryptocurrency industry suffered 785 reported hacks and exploits during the past 13 years. Nearly $19 billion worth of digital assets were stolen in the 13 years since June 19, 2011, when the first known crypto hack was reported, according to a Crystal Intelligence report shared with Cointelegraph. The largest single crypto theft case remains…
In an era of unprecedented technological advancements, the fusion of quantum AI and cognitive robotics emerges as a groundbreaking development. As someone deeply involved in AI, robotics and neuroscience, I am thrilled to share insights into how these areas are merging to develop smart machines capable of thinking, learning and engaging with the world in…
Meta Platforms will not launch its artificial intelligence assistant Meta AI in Europe for now following a request from the Irish privacy regulator on user data harnessed from Facebook and Instagram, the U.S. social media company said on Friday. The move by Meta came after complaints and a call by advocacy group NOYB to data…
Artificial intelligence may come for our jobs one day, but before that happens, the data centers it relies on are going to need a lot of electricity. So how do we power them and millions of U.S. homes and businesses without generating more climate-warming gases? Microsoft founder, billionaire philanthropist and investor Bill Gates is betting…
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