Short Takes – 6-13-23

Industry calls for clarity after White House extends software security form deadline. NextGov.com article. Pull quote: “The new guidance says OMB will approve a common attestation form developed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency before providing agencies with three months to collect the forms from critical software providers, and six months for all software vendors on their networks.”

New Nano-Tattoos Don't Need Batteries or Wires. Spectrum.IEEE.org article. ‘Tattoo” is not the best term here, apparently no skin piercing ‘needles’ involved. Pull quote: “The tattoos are composed of two inks—a zinc oxide ink containing embedded nanowires atop a graphene aerogel conductive ink. The two inks are painted on to the skin simultaneously via separate needles. Ergen says there is also some aerogel in the ink containing the nanowires, though at a lower ratio than that in the lower layer, and as a result, the two inks bond on contact.”

Trump scrambles to find lawyer on eve of first federal court appearance. WashingtonPost.com article. Pull quote: “Some on Trump’s team have pushed to pursue an aggressively partisan strategy in which they would accuse the Justice Department of prosecutorial misconduct and weaponizing the legal system against Trump. The other camp, a person briefed on the situation said, is urging the former president to put together a traditional defense team and believes that the case is winnable at trial through careful jury selection — one juror is all a defendant needs to convince to avoid conviction — and that a scorched-earth strategy could alienate a jury and the country.”

Democratic leader accuses McCarthy of reneging on budget deal with Biden. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: ““The Senate is going to mark up to the deal that was made. And so House Republicans are going to completely make themselves irrelevant [and] make their members vote on these deep, deep cuts, and it has no possibility of becoming law,” Aguilar said.”

Drone Security and Fault Injection Attacks. IOActive report. Pull quote: “Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) aims to cause a disruption in the hardware when processing certain operations. A metal coil (EM probe) is placed close to the surface of the target processor. The current flow through this coil will induce current changes inside the processor. This is expected to elicit changes in the behavior of the CPU in a way that could be used to gain an advantage; for example, by changing a value in a memory cell or register before or after it is processed.”

Railways Could Be Key “Utility Player” for Backup Power. HomelandSecurityNews.com article. Pull quote: ““There’s a lot of uncertainty around when extreme supply shortfalls are going to happen, where they will happen, and how extreme they may be,” said Jill Moraski, a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley, a researcher at Berkeley Lab, and the paper’s lead author. “We found that the U.S. rail network has the capacity to bring energy where it’s needed when these events happen, and that it can cost less than building new infrastructure.””

Up for Grabs: Why America Must Map the Moon. NationalInterest.org blog post. Pull quote: “The United States stands to reap enormous benefits from being the nation that underpins lunar infrastructure and science services. Not only will these systems benefit our astronauts and ability to place a permanent settlement on the Moon, but it will also deter other actors from setting up their own lunar systems which could have military applications. The Moon is currently up for grabs, and the first nation to establish basic navigational infrastructure will have a massive advantage when it comes to establishing and maintaining a settlement on the Moon. The U.S. should be the one in control of these crucial lunar settlement building blocks.”

UFO Whistleblower, Meet a Conspiracy-Loving Congress. Wired.com article. Pull quote: “The response was different among rank-and-file lawmakers, especially in the House, where the Grusch’s unvetted claims were seen as vindication by a small but vocal—and increasingly powerful—faction of far-right lawmakers who are heading up the inquiry ahead of a planned but still unscheduled hearing.”