Short Takes – 10-5-22

Weapons: Restocking the Arsenal Of Democracy. StrategyPage.com article. All that stuff going to Ukraine needs to be replaced. Pull quote: “Now the American military leaders have to convince the legislature to provide the money needed to replenish the stockpiles of weapons and munitions. To increase production sufficiently to replace what was sent to Ukraine requires providing a multi-year contract to cover the time it takes to increase annual production. You don’t need a permanent annual production because no war lasts forever and no nation can afford to keep building unused munitions, especially the expensive “smart” guided shells and rockets. The same rule applies to weapons like cannon-artillery and HIMARS rocket launchers.”

How the covid pop-up window is wreaking havoc on daily life in China. TechnologyReview.com article. Pull quote: “The pop-up, 弹窗, is one additional complicated layer that Beijing added to its tracing system. This window in the mobile covid app won’t go away unless the user immediately takes a PCR test. It gives broad instructions on what to do under the title “friendly reminders,” but it’s not so friendly. It masks a user’s QR code so that it can’t be scanned, thus denying people access to just about everywhere in China.” Some tech solutions are problems.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, NASA Launch Crew, Including Russian Cosmonaut, to Space Station. WSJ.com article. Pull quote: “Right now, SpaceX is the only space-transport provider NASA has certified to handle human missions, though Boeing Co. has been aiming to gain that status for its Starliner spacecraft after working through technical challenges and completing an uncrewed test flight to the station in May.”

Impacket and Exfiltration Tool Used to Steal Sensitive Information from Defense Industrial Base Organization. CISA.gov alert. Pull quote: “From November 2021 through January 2022, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) responded to advanced persistent threat (APT) activity on a Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Sector organization’s enterprise network. During incident response activities, CISA uncovered that likely multiple APT groups compromised the organization’s network, and some APT actors had long-term access to the environment. APT actors used an open-source toolkit called Impacket to gain their foothold within the environment and further compromise the network, and also used a custom data exfiltration tool, CovalentStealer, to steal the victim’s sensitive data.”

Cone of confusion: Why some say iconic hurricane map misled Floridians. WashingtonPost.com article. News services use just part of one of a dozen of depictions of hurricane threats from the National Weather Service and then complain that the NWS ‘mislead’ people about the area of potential destruction of Hurricane Ian. Pull quote: “The cone fails to communicate threats such as storm surge — the destructive rise in water above normally dry land at the coast — as well as inland flooding, winds and tornadoes. This leaves people unprepared to make life-changing decisions to save their lives and protect their property, Morss said.”