On Tuesday, the Air Force's 45th Space Wing confirmed that the timing for SpaceX's upcoming SAOCOM launch, which was set to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on March 30 using a Falcon 9 rocket, has been put on "indefinite" hold due to the impact of the current coronavirus crisis. TechCrunch reports: Vandenberg has declared a public health emergency as of this past weekend, and while there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the base thus far, the Air Force is limiting access to essential personnel, and providing only essential services, in addition to taking additional precautions to protect the safety of those who have to remain on site. The delay comes shortly after the company successfully launched 60 more of its Starlink satellites. The report notes that SpaceX still appears to be on track for its current mid-to-late May launch schedule for the first Commercial Crew mission with NASA.

A global arms race for a coronavirus vaccine is underway. The New York Times reports: In the three months since the virus began its deadly spread, China, Europe and the United States have all set off at a sprint to become the first to produce a vaccine. But while there is cooperation on many levels -- including among companies that are ordinarily fierce competitors -- hanging over the effort is the shadow of a nationalistic approach that could give the winner the chance to favor its own population and potentially gain the upper hand in dealing with the economic and geostrategic fallout from the crisis. What began as a question of who would get the scientific accolades, the patents and ultimately the revenues from a successful vaccine is suddenly a broader issue of urgent national security. And behind the scramble is a harsh reality: Any new vaccine that proves potent against the coronavirus -- clinical trials are underway in the United States, China and Europe already -- is sure to be in short supply as governments try to ensure that their own people are the first in line.

In China, 1,000 scientists are at work on a vaccine, and the issue has already been militarized: Researchers affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences have developed what is considered the nation's front-runner candidate for success and is recruiting volunteers for clinical trials. China "will not be slower than other countries," Wang Junzhi, a biological products quality control expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said Tuesday at a news conference in Beijing. The effort has taken on propaganda qualities. Already, a widely circulated photograph of Chen Wei, a virologist in the People's Liberation Army, receiving an injection of what was advertised to be the first vaccine, has been exposed as a fake, taken before a trip she made to Wuhan, where the virus began. President Trump has talked in meetings with pharmaceutical executives about making sure a vaccine is produced on American soil, to assure the United States controls its supplies. German government officials said they believed he tried to lure a German company, CureVac, to do its research and production, if it comes to that, in the United States.

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: Why were two apparently unexploded bombs sticking out of a lava tube on Hawaii's Mauna Loa? That's what Kawika Singson, a photographer, wondered in February when he was hiking on Mauna Loa, the colossal shield volcano that rises 55,700 feet from its base below the sea to its summit. Singson had stumbled upon relics of one of volcanology's more quixotic disaster response plans. These devices, described in more detail recently in the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's Volcano Watch blog, were two of 40 dropped by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1935 in an attempt to stop lava from plowing into Hilo, the most populous town on the island of Hawaii.

While Hilo was spared as the lava flow naturally lost its forward momentum, it wasn't the last time that humanity tried to fight volcanic fire with fire of its own. History is filled with schemes to stop molten kinetic rock, and the ineffective 1935 bombing and others show that lava flows are very rarely "a force we humans can reckon with," said Janine Krippner, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program...

That December, a pond of lava breached its levees and advanced on Hilo at a rate of a mile per day. Fearing it would reach the town and its watershed, Thomas Jaggar, the founder and first director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, called on the Army Air Corps. On Dec. 27, 10 Keystone B-3 and B-4 biplane bombers struck the lava flow, targeting its tubes and channels. Half these bombs were packed with 355 pounds of TNT. The other half were not explosive, and instead designed to emit smoke so the pilots could see where the bona fide bombs landed. Singson found one of those inert devices last month.

On Jan. 2, 1936, the lava flows ceased. Jaggar was convinced the bombing worked, but other experts thought it was a coincidence. Pilots did spot several imploded lava tubes, but their collapses were insufficient to block the flow of lava.

A similar operation was attempted in 1942, again to not much effect.
The conclusion reached by the Times' reporter? "Dense, superheated lava does whatever it wants."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Business: The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said it wishes to re-evaluate its decision to award the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar cloud contract with Microsoft, signaling a potential victory for Amazon in its protest of the award. The department "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS," it said in a court filing, referring to Amazon Web Services. The agency said it does not anticipate needing to discuss the matter with either AWS or Microsoft.

The contract -- called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI -- involves providing cloud storage of sensitive military data and technology, such as artificial intelligence, to the Department of Defense, and could result in revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon Web Services lost the contract to Microsoft's Azure cloud business in October, a decision that surprised many industry experts given Amazon's leadership in the industry. Amazon filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision, arguing that it was politically motivated by President Donald Trump's dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. "We look forward to complete, fair, and effective corrective action that fully insulates the re-evaluation from political influence and corrects the many issues affecting the initial flawed award," Amazon Web Services said in a statement.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said it supports the "decision to reconsider a small number of factors as it is likely the fastest way to resolve all issues and quickly provide the needed modern technology to people across our armed forces."

A federal judge said in court documents that Amazon's protest lawsuit over rival Microsoft being awarded a highly lucrative defense project was "likely to succeed on the merits" of one of its main arguments. From a report: In October, Microsoft was awarded the Pentagon's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing contract after the Trump administration and other lawmakers intervened on the tech giant's behalf. The document provides some insight into how U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith might rule on the case. To the chagrin of Microsoft and the Department of Defense, Campbell-Smith last month halted production on the JEDI cloud system, saying in her decision that the Pentagon erred in how it evaluated prices for competing proposals from the two tech companies.

Ten years ago, David Wang pulled off a remarkable trick, installing Android on the first-generation iPhone. Now Wang and his colleagues at cybersecurity startup Corellium are doing it again with the ostentatiously titled Project Sandcastle. From a report: And Forbes got an exclusive hands-on look at their Android for iPhone product ahead of its public release scheduled for later this Wednesday. The timing is sure to have Apple fanboys rubbernecking: Corellium is in the middle of being sued by Apple. As previously reported by Forbes, in August last year, Corellium was taken to court over Apple claims the startup breached copyright laws by creating software versions of the iPhone for security and testing. The case took a surprise turn late last month when Apple subpoenaed Spanish banking giant Santander and the $50 billion U.S. military and intelligence contractor L3Harris.

But Corellium has lofty ambitions for Project Sandcastle, saying that it'll actually show how Apple's walled garden, which it has fiercely protected since launching its flagship phone in 2007, can be deconstructed and taken over by others' software. "Project Sandcastle is about having fun building something new from the sand -- from the literal silicon of the hardware," said Corellium CEO Amanda Gorton, in a statement sent to Forbes. "Apple restricts iPhone users to operate inside a sandbox, but users own that hardware, and they should be able to use that hardware the way they want. So where sandboxes create limits and boundaries on the hardware that users own, sandcastles provide an opportunity to create something new and wonderful from the limitless bounds of your imagination."

A major electronics manufacturer for defense and communications markets was knocked offline after a ransomware attack, TechCrunch reported Thursday. From the report: A source with knowledge of the incident told TechCrunch that the defense contractor paid a ransom of about $500,000 shortly after the incident in mid-January, but that the company was not yet fully operational. California-based Communications & Power Industries (CPI) makes components for military devices and equipment, like radar, missile seekers and electronic warfare technology. The company counts the U.S. Department of Defense and its advanced research unit DARPA as customers. The company confirmed the ransomware attack. "We are working with a third-party forensic investigation firm to investigate the incident. The investigation is ongoing," said CPI spokesperson Amanda Mogin. "We have worked with counsel to notify law enforcement and governmental authorities, as well as customers, in a timely manner."

Turkey deployed dozens of unmanned "drone" combat aircraft over Syria, calling the maneuver a new military milestone, reports Bloomberg: Turkey deployed swarms of killer drones to strike Russian-backed Syrian government forces, in what a senior official said was a military innovation that demonstrated Ankara's technological prowess on the battlefield. The retaliation for the killing last week of 33 Turkish soldiers by Syrian forces involved an unprecedented number of drones in coordinated action, said the senior official in Turkey with direct knowledge of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Syria policy. It was the first time a country had commanded the air space over such a large area using drone swarms, according to the official.

The series of strikes since Thursday by dozens of the remotely-controlled aircraft targeted Syrian bases and chemical warfare depots, the Turkish military said. But Turkey also located and destroyed some Syrian missile-defense systems, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Russian-made equipment intended to deter such air attacks.... Ankara appeared eager to show off its aerial firepower. The Defense Ministry posted a series of videos on Twitter showing Syrian tanks and artillery being destroyed in apparent drone attacks.

"Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II, the costly stealth jet considered to be pinnacle of U.S. military aviation, 'would have no chance' if pitted against a drone [fighter plane] that is remotely piloted by a human," writes Business Insider.

Long-time Slashdot reader DeadlyBattleRobot shares their report: At the U.S. Air Force's Air Warfare Symposium in Florida, Musk said there should be a competitor to the F-35 program, according to a tweet by Lee Hudson, the Pentagon editor at Aviation Week... The Air Force conference at which Musk made his comments included senior US military officials and pilots. Speaking with Space and Missile Systems Center Commander Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Musk said autonomous drone warfare "is where it's at" and "where the future will be," according to Defense News.

"It's not that I want the future to be this. That's just what the future will be," Musk added. "The fighter jet era has passed. Yeah, the fighter jet era has passed. It's drones."

Federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible exposure to the coronavirus without proper medical training or protective gear then scattered into the general population, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing a government whistle-blower. From the report: In a portion of a complaint filing obtained by The New York Times that has been submitted to the Office of the Special Counsel, the whistle-blower, described as a senior leader at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the team was "improperly deployed" to two military bases in California to assist the processing of Americans who had been evacuated from coronavirus hot zones in China and elsewhere.

The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received. They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later, the person said. Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature three times a day.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Newly released and previously secret documents explain in greater detail how, and why, a section of the U.S. military decides to publicly release a steady stream of adversarial countries' malware, including hacking tools from North Korea and Russia. Cyber Command, or CYBERCOM, publishes the malware samples onto VirusTotal, a semi-public repository that researchers and defenders can then pore over to make systems more secure. The document provides more insight into how the U.S. military is engaged in an unusually public-facing campaign, and in particular highlights one of the reasons CYBERCOM wants to release other nation's hacking tools: to make it harder for enemy hackers to remain undetected.

A previously secret section of one of the CYBERCOM documents reads "Posting malware to VT [VirusTotal] and Tweeting to bring attention and awareness supports this strategy by putting pressure on malicious cyber actors, disrupting their efforts." Motherboard obtained the redacted documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to CYBERCOM. CYBERCOM started publishing malware in 2018, with one sample coming from Russian-linked hacking group APT28. It has since released malware from North Korean hackers. CYBERCOM also has a dedicated Twitter account for distributing news of the samples. Some tweets even include memes such as "DPRK MALWARE" written onto conversation candy hearts to coincide with a release on Valentines Day. When it originally announced the campaign, CYBERCOM said it "initiated an effort to share unclassified malware samples it has discovered that it believes will have the greatest impact on improving global cybersecurity." But the documents show how the effort has a more offensive slant, too. In a statement a CYBERCOM spokesperson reiterated some of the agency's earlier public comments, writing, "We plan to continue to publicly disclose malware samples, which we believe will have the greatest impact on improving global security."

You can read the documents here.

Boeing has found debris in the fuel tanks of 35 of their 737 Max aircraft. After inspecting just 50 of the 400 planes which were awaiting delivery to customers, Boeing found debris in "about two-thirds" of them reports the Wall Street Journal, citing both federal and aviation-industry officials.

"The revelation comes as the plane maker struggles to restore public and airline confidence in the grounded fleet." Materials left behind include tools, rags and boot coverings, according to industry officials familiar with the details... [T]he new problem raises fresh questions about Boeing's ability to resolve lingering lapses in quality-control practices and presents another challenge to Chief Executive David Calhoun, who took charge in January... Last year, debris was found on some 787 Dreamliners, which Boeing produces in Everett, Washington... Boeing also twice had to halt deliveries of the KC-46A military refueling tanker to the U.S. Air Force after tools and rags were found in planes after they had been delivered from its Everett factory north of Seattle.
Their report include this observation from an Air Force procurement chief last summer. "It does not take a rocket scientist to deliver an airplane without trash and debris on it. It just merely requires following a set of processes, having a culture that values integrity of safety above moving the line faster for profit."

But "This isn't an isolated incident either," argues long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace. "The New York Times reported about shody production and weak oversight at Boeing's North Charleston plant which makes the 787 Dreamliner back in April." A New York Times review of hundreds of pages of internal emails, corporate documents and federal records, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, reveals a culture that often valued production speed over quality. Facing long manufacturing delays, Boeing pushed its work force to quickly turn out Dreamliners, at times ignoring issues raised by employees...

Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators. Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. Workers have filed nearly a dozen whistle-blower claims and safety complaints with federal regulators, describing issues like defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations. Others have sued Boeing, saying they were retaliated against for flagging manufacturing mistakes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The Department of Defense agency responsible for securing the communications of President Trump has suffered a data breach. Here's what is known so far. The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) describes itself as a combat support agency of the Department of Defense (DoD) and is tasked with the responsibility for supporting secure White House communications, including those of President Trump. As well as overseeing Trump's secure calls technology, DISA also establishes and supports communications networks in combat zones and takes care of military cyber-security issues. It has also confirmed a data breach of its network, which exposed data affecting as many as 200,000 users.

First picked up by Reuters, disclosure letters dated February 11 have been sent out to those whose personal data may have been compromised. Although it is not clear which specific servers have been breached, nor the nature of the users to whom the letters have been sent, that an agency with a vision to "connect and protect the war-fighter in cyberspace" should suffer such an incident is concerning, to say the least. While many of the details surrounding this breach are likely to remain, understandably, confidential, given the nature of the DISA work, the letter itself has already been published on Twitter by one recipient. Signed by Roger S. Greenwell, the chief information officer at DISA, the letter revealed the breach took place between May and July last year, and information including social security numbers may have been compromised as a result. It also stated that there is no evidence that any personally identifiable information (PII) has been misused as a result. The letter does, however, confirm that DISA will be offering free credit monitoring services to those who want it.

The US and UK governments have issued official statements today formally accusing Russia's military intelligence agency, GRU, with carrying out a coordinated cyber-attack on thousands of Georgian websites in October 2019. From a report: The incident, widely reported at the time, was considered the largest cyber-attack in the former Soviet country's history. According to a report at the time, unidentified hackers broke into at least one web hosting provider and defaced more than 15,000 websites with an image of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, with the text "I'll be back" overlaid on top. The former Georgia President was known for his fierce pro-Western agenda but is now a Ukrainian citizen after leaving Georgia in 2013, citing a political witch-hunt on corruption charges. The messages were reported as appearing on sites for the Georgian government, courts, NGOs, news media, and local businesses. In some cases, the web host disruption also took down broadcasting services for some radio and TV stations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Members of the Hamas Palestinian militant group have posed as young teenage girls to lure Israeli soldiers into installing malware-infected apps on their phones, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said today. Some soldiers fell for the scam, but IDF said they detected the infections, tracked down the malware, and then took down Hamas' hacking infrastructure. IDF said Hamas operatives created Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram accounts and then approached IDF soldiers. According to IDF spokesperson Brigadier General Hild Silberman, Hamas agents posed as new Israeli immigrants in order to excuse their lacking knowledge of the Hebrew language.

Gen. Silberman said the apps would give the impression they can't run on soldiers' phones by showing a crash message. The apps would then delete their icons from the soldier's smartphone, tricking the user into thinking the app uninstalled itself. However, the app would keep running in the background. The malicious apps would then exfiltrate photos, SMS messages, contacts, and more. The apps could also install other malware on the device, track the phone's geo-location in real-time, and even take screenshots via the phone's camera. Israeli cyber-security firm Check Point says the malware belongs to a group it's been tracking under the codename of APT-C-23, active since the summer of 2018.

Members of the Hamas Palestinian militant group have posed as young teenage girls to lure Israeli soldiers into installing malware-infected apps on their phones, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said today. From a report: Some soldiers fell for the scam, but IDF said they detected the infections, tracked down the malware, and then took down Hamas' hacking infrastructure. IDF said Hamas operatives created Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram accounts and then approached IDF soldiers. According to IDF spokesperson Brigadier General Hild Silberman, Hamas agents posed as new Israeli immigrants in order to excuse their lacking knowledge of the Hebrew language. IDF investigators said they tracked accounts for six characters used in the recent social engineering campaign. The accounts were named Sarah Orlova, Maria Jacobova, Eden Ben Ezra, Noa Danon, Yael Azoulay, and Rebecca Aboxis, respectively. Soldiers who engaged in conversations were eventually lured towards installing one of three chat apps, named Catch & See, Grixy, and Zatu, where the agents promised to share more photos.

Newly leaked documents show that the Department of Defense funded a study concerning UFOs, contradicting recent statements by the Pentagon. From a report: In 2017, The New York Times revealed the existence of $22 million dollar UFO investigation program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. A twist came two months ago, however, when Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told John Greenewald -- curator of the Black Vault, the largest civilian archive of declassified government documents -- that AATIP had nothing to do with UFOs. Greenewald also wrote that the Pentagon told him that another program, the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program or AAWSAP, was the name of the contract that the government gave out to produce reports under AATIP. In a new Popular Mechanics article, journalist Tim McMillan acquired documents from Bigelow Aerospace's exotic science division, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, or BAASS, indicating that the organization did explore strange phenomena under the auspices of the AATIP program.

One BAASS report, leaked to McMillan by an unnamed source, previously appeared on a list of products produced under the AATIP contract "for DIA to publish" that was obtained via FOIA laws. The report was cited incorrectly on that list, but Popular Mechanics tracked down its author, who confirmed its authenticity. The report investigated "exotic" propulsion via injuries sustained by people who experienced "exposure to anomalous vehicles." The text mentions UFOs several times. "What can not be overly emphasized, is that when one looks at the literature of anomalous cases, including UFO claims from the most reliable sources, the extent and degree of acute high but not necessarily chronic low-level injuries are consistent across patients who are injured, compared to witnesses in the far-field, who are not," the report states. Notably, the report's author -- Christopher "Kit" Green -- told Popular Mechanics that he was not contracted by BAASS except to produce this report and that it provides zero evidence for extraterrestrial or non-human technologies. Further reading: Navy Confirms It Has a Secret Classified Video of an Infamous UFO Incident, Says Releasing It Would Threaten National Security.

Greg Miller, reporting for Washington Post: For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software. The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.

But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company's devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages. The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project. The account identifies the CIA officers who ran the program and the company executives entrusted to execute it. It traces the origin of the venture as well as the internal conflicts that nearly derailed it. It describes how the United States and its allies exploited other nations' gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets. The operation, known first by the code name "Thesaurus" and later "Rubicon," ranks among the most audacious in CIA history.

The Trump administration on Monday unveiled its $4.8 trillion budget proposal which, among other things, includes plans to increase federal funding for the development of AI and quantum computing. "The technologies are expected to become an important part of national security, and some worry the United States is behind China in their development," reports The New York Times. From the report: The funding [...] would direct more money for A.I. research to the Defense Department and the National Science Foundation. The administration also wants to spend $25 million on what it calls a national "quantum internet," a network of machines designed to make it much harder to intercept digital communication. For several years, technologists have urged the Trump administration to back research on artificial intelligence -- which could affect things as diverse as weapons and transportation -- and quantum computing, a new way to build super-powerful computers. China's government, in particular, has made building these machines a priority, and some national security experts worry that the United States is at risk of falling behind.

The proposed spending follows earlier administration moves. In 2018, President Trump signed a law that earmarked $1.2 billion for quantum research. The Energy Department recently began distributing its portion of that money -- about $625 million -- to research labs in industry, academia and government. [...] The new budget proposal would increase funding for artificial intelligence research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the Defense Department, to $249 million from $50 million, and at the National Science Foundation to $850 million from about $500 million. The administration also vowed to double funding for A.I. and quantum computing research outside the Defense Department by 2022. Big tech companies have invested heavily in A.I. research over the last decade. But many experts have worried that universities and government labs have lost much of their talent to businesses. Under the new funding plan, the National Science Foundation would apply $50 million to help train A.I. experts.

U.S. prosecutors have charged four hackers said to be working for the Chinese military for the 2018 cyberattack at Equifax, which led to the theft of more than 147 million credit reports in a massive data breach. From a report: Attorney general William Barr accused the four members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army of hacking into the credit giant over a period of several months. The nine-charge indictment was announced Monday against Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei. "This is the largest theft of sensitive PII by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded," said FBI deputy director David Bowdich. Equifax revealed the data breach in September 2017, months after it discovered hackers had broken into its systems. An investigation showed the company failed to patch a web server it knew was vulnerable for weeks, which let hackers crash the servers and steal massive amounts of personal data.