Cyber Surveillance Program News

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

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.