Cyber Surveillance Program News

30/01/2021

11/07/2019

In recent years, small drones have made their way onto battlefields where they’ve been used to surveil US forces or drop bombs on them, prompting the US military to develop new ways to take them down. This week, the US Air Force unveiled a new tool that can be stationed at bases around the world: a high-powered microwave system called Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR), which is designed to protect bases against swarms of drones.

The Air Force Research Laboratory at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, developed the system, which uses short bursts of high-powered microwaves to disable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to local TV station KRQE, the system was developed quickly (18 months) for about $15 million. It runs off of a generator and is stored in a shipping container, meaning it can be transported almost anywhere and set up within a couple of hours.

The Air Force began testing THOR against short-range targets earlier this spring, while another system, the Counter-Electronic High-Power Microwave Extended-Range Air Base Air Defense (CHIMERA) is designed to hit things at medium to long ranges. That system is expected to be delivered sometime next year.

The military predicts that a major problem will be swarms of drones operating in concert when it wouldn’t matter if one or two are taken down. This system is effectively designed to take out a large number of drones all at once and has a further range than bullets or nets. THOR program manager Amber Anderson says that the system “operates like a flashlight,” and that anything caught in the beam “will be taken down ... in the blink of an eye.”

https://youtu.be/Ogi_o8dszrk

07/07/2019

☣☣☣☣ JULY
UPDATES PATCHES 3️⃣3️⃣ NEW ☣☣☣☣☣

Google has started rolling out this month's security updates for its mobile operating system platform to address a total of 33 new security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices, 9 of which have been rated critical in severity.

The vulnerabilities affect various Android components, including the Android operating system, framework, library, media framework, as well as Qualcomm components, including closed-source components.

Three of the critical vulnerabilities patched this month reside in Android's Media framework, the most severe of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a targeted device, within the context of a privileged process, by convincing users into opening a specially crafted malicious file.

"The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are turned off for development purposes or if successfully bypassed," the company says.

Out of the remaining seven critical vulnerabilities, one affects Android Library, one affects the System, two resides in Qualcomm components (one in DSP_Services and one in Kernel), and three resides in Qualcomm closed-source components.

Besides this, a high-severity flaw (CVE-2019-2104) in the Android Framework could allow an installed malicious app to bypass user interaction requirements in an attempt to gain access to additional permissions.

Six high-severity vulnerabilities addressed in Qualcomm components resides in WLAN Host (CVE-2019-2276, CVE-2019-2307), WLAN Driver (CVE-2019-2305), HLOS (CVE-2019-2278), and Audio (CVE-2019-2326, CVE-2019-2328).

According to the Android security advisory, none of the flaws addressed this month were publicly disclosed or found being exploited in the wild.

07/07/2019

Taiwanese networking equipment manufacturer D-Link has agreed to implement a "comprehensive software security program" in order to settle a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit alleging that the company didn't take adequate steps to protect its consumers from hackers.

Your wireless router is the first line of defense against potential threats on the Internet.

" -Link have failed to take reasonable software testing and remediation measures to protect their routers and IP cameras against well known and easily preventable software security flaws," the complaint says. "In truth and in fact, Defendants did not take reasonable steps to secure their products from access."

However, sadly, most widely-used routers fail to offer necessary security features and have often found vulnerable to serious security flaws, eventually enabling remote attackers to unauthorizedly access networks and compromise the security of other devices connected to it.

In recent years, the security of wireless networks has been more of a hot topic due to cyber attacks, as well as has gained headlines after the discovery of critical vulnerabilities—such as authentication bypass, remote code ex*****on, hard-coded login credentials, and information disclosure—in routers manufactured by various brands.

In 2017, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against D-Link, one of the more popular router manufacturers, over the poor security of its wireless routers, IP cameras, and other Internet-connected devices.

According to the FTC complaint, D-Link allegedly misrepresented the security of its products to its customers, didn't adequately test its products for well-known and easy-to-fix security flaws, and also failed to secure devices when security vulnerabilities were reported by independent security researchers.

13/10/2018

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