Interesting story: USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers observed many deep scratches in the sonar dome’s rubber “NOFOUL” coating. In some areas, the coating was described as being shredded, with rips up to four feet long. Large … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: US Naval Ship Attacked by Squid in 1978” »
Category: military
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Interesting article—with photos!—of the US/UK “Combined Cipher Machine” from WWII. Powered by WPeMatico
During the Cold War, the US Navy tried to make a secret code out of whale song. The basic plan was to develop coded messages from recordings of whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals. The submarine would broadcast the noises and a computer—the Combo Signal Recognizer (CSR)—would detect the specific patterns and decode them on … Read More “Whale Song Code” »
Ukraine is using $400 drones to destroy tanks: Facing an enemy with superior numbers of troops and armor, the Ukrainian defenders are holding on with the help of tiny drones flown by operators like Firsov that, for a few hundred dollars, can deliver an explosive charge capable of destroying a Russian tank worth more than … Read More “The Future of Drone Warfare” »
The NSA discovered the intrusion in 2020—we don’t know how—and alerted the Japanese. The Washington Post has the story: The hackers had deep, persistent access and appeared to be after anything they could get their hands on—plans, capabilities, assessments of military shortcomings, according to three former senior U.S. officials, who were among a dozen current … Read More “China Hacked Japan’s Military Networks” »
People are leaking classified military information on discussion boards for the video game War Thunder to win arguments—repeatedly. Powered by WPeMatico
Late last year, the NSA declassified and released a redacted version of Lambros D. Callimahos’s Military Cryptanalytics, Part III. We just got most of the index. It’s hard to believe that there are any real secrets left in this 44-year-old volume. Powered by WPeMatico
“If you think any of these systems are going to work as expected in wartime, you’re fooling yourself.” That was Bruce’s response at a conference hosted by US Transportation Command in 2017, after learning that their computerized logistical systems were mostly unclassified and on the Internet. That may be necessary to keep in touch with … Read More “Vulnerabilities in Weapons Systems” »
Lukasz Olejnik has a good essay on hacking weapons systems. Basically, there is no reason to believe that software in weapons systems is any more vulnerability free than any other software. So now the question is whether the software can be accessed over the Internet. Increasingly, it is. This is likely to become a bigger … Read More “Hacking Weapons Systems” »
The NSA has issued an advisory on the risks of location data. Mitigations reduce, but do not eliminate, location tracking risks in mobile devices. Most users rely on features disabled by such mitigations, making such safeguards impractical. Users should be aware of these risks and take action based on their specific situation and risk tolerance. … Read More “The NSA on the Risks of Exposing Location Data” »