• Extremist content and Russian disinformation online: Working with tech to find solutions

    “It’s been more than a year since my colleagues and I described in writing how the Russian disinformation system attacked our American democracy. We’ve all learned considerably more since then about the Kremlin’s campaigns, witnessed their move to France and Germany and now watch as the world worst regimes duplicate their methods. Yet our country remains stalled in observation, halted by deliberation and with each day more divided by manipulative forces coming from afar. The U.S. government, social media companies, and democracies around the world don’t have any more time to wait. In conclusion, civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

  • Improving sensor accuracy to prevent overload of the electrical grid

    Electrical physicists from Czech Technical University have provided additional evidence that new current sensors introduce errors when assessing current through iron conductors. It’s crucial to correct this flaw in the new sensors so that operators of the electrical grid can correctly respond to threats to the system. The researchers show how a difference in a conductor’s magnetic permeability, the degree of material’s magnetization response in a magnetic field, affects the precision of new sensors.

  • New Zealand energy firm invests $10 million in Iron Dome maker

    New Zealand-based energy and communications infrastructure provider Vector invested $10 million in the Israeli company that developed the Iron Dome. Some of the technologies that power Israel’s remarkable protection against projectiles will be used by Vector as part of its IoT (Internet of Things) approach to optimizing management and control services.

  • The real risks quantum attacks will pose for Bitcoin

    Combining expertise in quantum technologies and cryptography, researchers have been projecting future dates that quantum computers could jeopardize the security of current cryptocurrencies, a market now worth over $150 billion, and assessing countermeasures to such attacks.

  • MSU urged to pull the plug on an “eco-terrorism” video game

    Michigan State University’s award-winning computer game development lab has developed a new computer game called “Thunderbird Strike.” Dr. Elizabeth LaPensee, the game’s designer, says that, among other things, the game is designed to “bring awareness to pipeline issues and contribute to the discontinuation of [Enbridge’s] Line 5.” Enbridge’s Line 5 is a 645-mile, 30-inch-diameter pipeline that travels through Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. In the game, players get to blow up pipelines. Oil industry officials argue that the game, in effect, encourages players to engage in acts of domestic terrorism.

  • WannaCry report shows NHS chiefs knew of security danger, but management took no action

    A report from the parliamentary National Audit Office into the WannaCry ransomware attack that brought down significant parts of Britain’s National Health Service in May 2017 has predictably been reported as blaming NHS trusts and smaller organizations within the care system for failing to ensure that appropriate computer security measures such as software updates and secure firewalls were in place. But the central NHS IT organization, NHS Digital, provided security alerts and the correct patches that would have protected vulnerable systems well before WannaCry hit. This is not a cybersecurity failure in the practicalities, but a failure of cybersecurity management at the top level.

  • North Korea behind May 2017 WannaCry attack on British health services: U.K.

    The British government has said it was all but certain North Korea carried out the “WannaCry” malware attack which hobbled the IT systems of the NHS, Britain’s national health service, in May. The National Audit Office (NAO) released a report on Friday which found that hospitals and clinics were left exposed to cyberattack because they failed to follow basic cybersecurity recommendations. WannaCry attacks were not limited to the United Kingdom: More than 300,000 computers in 150 countries were also infected with the WannaCry ransomware. The malware crippled organizations — government agencies, global companies, small firms — by targeting computers with outdated security.

  • Electricity sector uncertainty requires new decision-making tools

    Before it was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2016, the Clean Power Plan offered state electric utilities and their regulators a degree of certainty as they confronted a rapidly changing market and technology landscape. Although not all agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approach, the Clean Power Plan’s predictable long-term emissions reduction targets provided clear goals to evaluate investments in traditional generation sources like coal and nuclear energy and resources on the rise like natural gas, wind, solar, and distributed generation.

  • Battelle completes 15-year CO2 storage project at Mountaineer Power Plant

    One of the first tests for geologic storage of carbon dioxide at a commercial, coal-fired power plant has concluded, more than fifteen years after it began, completing a journey from an initial exploratory well to successful operations and site closure. The Mountaineer project helped establish the technical viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, and to store carbon dioxide in geologic layers with limited prior data.

  • Rethinking the role of the private sector in disaster relief

    Natural disasters have filled the news in recent months, occurring so frequently that they seem to intimate apocalypse: wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes. Global damages from disaster continue apace—currently pegged between $250-300 billion per year> But as national and international media coverage of these events recedes, the local effects persist—often for years. Small businesses, which account for the vast majority of enterprises in the U.S. and employ half of the private-sector workforce, are particularly vulnerable when disaster strikes

  • CBP completes construction of border wall prototypes

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced Thursday that construction for prototypes of the Border Wall has concluded in San Diego. The prototype construction phase is complete. CBP will now test and evaluate the finished products, provided by industry, to determine which wall design elements meets our needs. This testing and evaluation period will last thirty to sixty days.

  • DOD to remove Kaspersky software from Pentagon systems

    The Department of Defense is reviewing its computer systems to make sure that software from under-suspicion Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky does not touch any military systems. In September DHS issued a directive to all civilian government agencies to remove Kaspersky software from their systems. The directive, which gave agencies three months to complete the removal, referred to deepening concerns in the U.S. intelligence community about the close relationship between Kaspersky and the Russian intelligence agencies.

  • DOD to remove Kaspersky software from Pentagon systems

    The Department of Defense is reviewing its computer systems to make sure that software from under-suspicion Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky does not touch any military systems. In September DHS issued a directive to all civilian government agencies to remove Kaspersky software from their systems. The directive, which gave agencies three months to complete the removal, referred to deepening concerns in the U.S. intelligence community about the close relationship between Kaspersky and the Russian intelligence agencies.

  • S&T funds training of the next generation of animal health experts

    Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs) are highly contagious with high morbidity and mortality. These diseases quickly cross-national borders, negatively impacting a country’s economic stability and public health by reducing exports, food quality and quantity, and the availability of livestock products and animal power. They pose serious threats to a country’s well-being, and scientists around the world are continuously investigating new methods to prevent their spread. This past summer, DHS S&T funded two programs — Texas A&M University’s Bench to Shop program and Kansas State University’s Transboundary Animal Disease Fellowship — to train the next generation of animal health experts.

  • DHS, FBI warn critical infrastructure firms of attacks by “Russia-linked” hackers

    DHS and the FBI on Friday have issued an alert that warning critical infrastructure companies of “advanced persistent threat (APT) actions targeting government entities and organizations in the energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.” DHS said the hacking campaign, labeled Dragonfly, is a Kremlin-sponsored operation.