Short Takes – 8-16-25

New DoD Cyber Supply Chain Security Guidance from GAO and Secretary of Defense. Eclyupsium.com blog post. Pull quote: “The GAO report focused more broadly than the Secretary of Defense’s memo, highlighting non-cyber risks, such as the potential of an adversarial supplier cutting off access to certain materials or products. The GAO and SecDef memos overlapped heavily in their focus on visibility and transparency. Both expressed serious concern about the lack of visibility into the sources of critical materials and components. This lack of knowledge creates significant risk of malicious components.”

Here’s Why Rabbits Are Sprouting Tentacle Horns. ScientificAmerican.com article. Pull quote: “It’s not clear whether there are actually more rabbits than usual infected with Shope papillomavirus in northern Colorado this summer, Van Hoose says. CPW had not received any reports of horned-faced rabbits before a local news story published on August 8 drew attention to sightings in Fort Collins, Colo. Since then multiple people have called the agency, Van Hoose says, but it’s hard to tell how many infected rabbits there really are.”

The Critical Role of SBOMs in Medical Device Security. Forescout.com blog post. Pull quote: “Medical device manufacturers can no longer think of themselves solely as hardware companies. They are software companies operating in a life-critical environment where security failures can directly impact patient safety. The adoption of SBOMs, coupled with robust vulnerability management processes and regulatory compliance frameworks, provides the foundation for addressing these challenges.”

Deep-Sea Desalination Pulls Fresh Water from the Depths. ScientificAmerican.com article. Pull quote: “That’s the idea behind subsea desalination. Reverse osmosis pods are submerged to depths of around 500 meters (1,600 feet), where immense hydrostatic pressure does the heavy lifting of separating water from salt. Purified water is then pumped back to shore. Far-fetched as it may sound, there are multiple prototypes already at work; the companies behind them aim to take cheap, large-scale desalination from pipe dream to reality.”

A Practical Path to Cybersecurity Risk Quantification. GuidePointSecurity.com blog post. Pull quote: “Start with a manageable set of high-impact risk scenarios—like ransomware on a key system or third-party data exposure. CRQ works best when applied iteratively and intentionally.”

Seven superclouds sit just beyond the solar system. ScienceNews.com article. Pull quote: “The find adds to the discovery of a nearby supercloud dubbed the Radcliffe Wave reported in 2020. It comes within 1,000 light-years of the solar system, and wiggles above and below the disk of the galaxy for thousands of light-years.” Nearby is relative when talking astronomical distances.

US military deploying over 4,000 additional troops to waters around Latin America as part of Trump’s counter-cartel mission. CNN.com article. Pull quote: “The deployment of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit to US Southern Command, which has not been previously reported, is part of a broader repositioning of military assets to the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility that has been underway over the last three weeks, one of the officials said.”

This month, I am offering a reduced-price subscription to my CFSN Detailed Analysis newsletter, 40% off the annual subscription rate. Sale ends on August 31^st, 2025.