Late last year, Russian aerospace and defence giant United Aircraft Corporation confirmed that new weapons systems designed especially for the Su-57 had been developed or were in active development, without elaborating.
A prototype hypersonic missile designed for use aboard Russia’s new Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter has been created, a defence sector source had told Russian media.
The source described the missile as a small, air-to-surface weapon designed to be carried inside the plane’s fuselage, and said it has yet to be tested aboard the plane.
No other details about the weapon’s characteristics or who developed it were made available, and the reports have yet to be commented on by anyone at UAC, Sukhoi or the military.
The defence sector first teased the possibility of deploying hypersonic missiles similar to the Kinzhal hypersonic, nuclear-capable missile in 2018. Kinzhal was deployed into service aboard the MiG-31K in December 2017, and a version of the missile for the Tu-160 ‘White Swan’ strategic bombers is also being developed. The weapon is believed to have an operational range of up to 3,000 km, and a flight speed of Mach 10-Mach 12 (12,250-14,700 km per hour).
Large-scale deliveries of the Su-57 into Russia’s aerospace forces are expected to begin later this year . The aircraft is a fifth-generation stealth superiority fighter created by the JSC Sukhoi Company. The planes are intended to eventually replace the MiG-29 and Su-27 in Russia’s Aerospace Force and Navy, and are equipped with advanced avionics, airborne active phased radar, ELINT and a variety of high-precision weaponry.

Russian first S-350 Vityaz medium-range air defence missile system

The first S-350 Vityaz medium-range air defence missile systems have been added to the Russian air force's arsenal, the Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.
"The first newest S-350 Vityaz air defence missile systems have been added to the Russian air force's arsenal. [The systems] have recently been deployed to the training centre of the anti-aircraft missile forces in Gatchina [a city in the Leningrad region]," the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that the centre had already run tests with the S-350 aimed at detecting and destroying conventional hostile aircraft.

Newest S-350 Vityaz Air Defence System

According to the ministry, the air defence missile systems will help make the air force two times more effective in countering cruise missile strikes and replace the older S-300PS system.
In mid-January, the ministry said that Russia's Leningrad region would be the first to host the air defence missile systems.
The S-350 was developed by the Almaz-Antey concern and first showcased at the International Military-Technical Forum Army-2019.

The Pentagon to hold a top secret meeting on the "Sino-Russian alignment " next week

The Pentagon will hold top-secret talks on the so-called "Sino-Russian alignment," a notice published in the Federal Register said on Wednesday.
"On March 3-4, 2020 the Defence Policy Board (DPB) will have classified discussions on national security implications related to Sino-Russian alignment," the notice said.
The top-secret talks will take place at the Pentagon, and the speakers will include senior intelligence community officers, Defence and Treasury Department officials, as well as experts, it added.
The participants will discuss their perspectives, views and insights and review classified information on relations between Russia and China, the notice said. They are also expected to provide recommendations to the Secretary of Defence.

Be aware of the proton VPN you are using.Your internet activities are not secure

Hackers used fake ProtonVPN installers to infect users with nasty Azorult malware.

One of the easiest ways to lure users to install malware on their computers is to imitate legitimate websites. This is exactly what certain attackers have done as recently investigated by researchers at Kaspersky by targeting ProtonVPN.

For the unfamiliar, ProtonVPN is a Swiss-based product by the very same company that operates the very famous ProtonMail. Currently, ProtonVPN has more than 2 million users around the world and that makes it a lucrative target for cybercriminals.

According to Kaspersky, hackers have cloned the design of ProtonVPN’s official website (protonvpn[.]com) to drop AZORult malware through its installer file.

Snapshot of the fake ProtonVPN website:

For your information, Azorult is a RAT (remote access Trojan) that can infect any computer successfully. Azorult was previously found targeting thousands of Magneto sites and spreading PayPal themed banking malware. The same malware was caught last month spreading itself using Drake’s “kiki do you love me” song.

According to Kaspersky’s blog post, to clone the website successfully, hackers made use of a program named HTTrack which made the fake website look similar in its design to the real one.

A comment indicating the user of HTTrack for the site’s clone.

Therefore, if a user did not know of the original site’s exact domain, they would naturally believe that the site they are visiting is indeed legitimate and hence proceed to download the ProtonVPN installer.

However, instead, they would get AZORult malware in the form of a file named ProtonVPN_win_v1.10.0[.]exe which then can collect highly sensitive information such as one’s passwords, financial information, browsing history, cookies & much more once installed.

The data collected is then relayed to the attackers through their C2 server, also located on their fake website at accounts[.]protonvpn[.]store.

To take things a step further, the AZORult can also steal your cryptocurrencies from any wallets that are locally installed on your computers such as Electrum along with “credentials for WinSCP, Pidgin messenger, and others.”

A snapshot of an analysis being done by Kaspersky of the malware.

To add to this, the fake domain was registered in November 2019 through a Russian registrar service. Since then, the attackers have also started targeting users through malicious advertising campaigns, more specifically “affiliation banners networks.”

To conclude, there have been several similar incidents in the past and we can expect them to keep occurring. An example was when we saw fake sites claiming to be official Fortnite distributors spring up prompting users to download malware in actuality. Last year, hackers used similar tactics by cloning the NordVPN website to drop banking trojan.

Iranian hackers targeting Israel!

The new report claims that Iranian hackers have been targeting Israel and other countries with this campaign.

According to the findings of the UK-based cybersecurity firm ClearSky, an Iranian APT group has been running a widespread hacking campaign to compromise VPN servers and install backdoors or bugs to access networks of different organizations across the globe. 

Dubbed Fox Kitten; the campaign was launched three years back (2017) to target “dozens of companies and organizations in Israel around the world,” the company stated in its official statement.

The attackers successfully infiltrated networks of many organizations across diverse sectors from IT, oil and gas, telecom, security, and government. The organizations have footprints throughout the world, which makes this campaign a global scam.

Image credit: ClearSky

The alarming fact is that during this operation, Iranian hackers not only gained access to the networks of so many organizations around the world but made sure that they were able to hijack the device for as long as they wanted to.

Using the campaign, hackers could develop and maintain access routes to their target companies and obtain sensitive data.

“Hackers maintained a long-lasting foothold at the targeted organizations and breach additional companies through supply-chain attacks,” researchers said in their blog post.

To pull off the attack, hackers used different tools, a majority of which were open-source software while some were self-enveloped. As per previous research, the most successful attack vector that Iranian hackers have used so far is the exploitation of systems vulnerabilities encouraged by unpatched RDP and VPN services.

Image credit: ClearSky

Once they are able to access the organizational networks, they tend to create more access points to reach the core corporate network. This is why closing one access point doesn’t affect their capability of monitoring company networks.

In fact, ClearSky claims that Iranian APT groups can exploit VPN flaws in a few hours, as soon as the bug is disclosed. ZDNet reports that Fortinet, Pulse Secure, Citrix VPNs, and Palo Alto Networks are some of the targets of Iranian hacker groups.

United States on Sunday successfully tested an unarmed life-extended Trident II (D5LE) ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the US Navy said.

United States on Sunday successfully tested an unarmed life-extended Trident II (D5LE) ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the US Navy said.

According to the statement, the missile was launched from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Maine (SSBN-741) off the coast of San Diego, California.

"Today's scheduled test validated performance expectations of the life-extended Trident II (D5LE) Strategic Weapon System (SWS) and gathered additional data on the SWS' reliability, accuracy, and performance factors. This launch marks 178 successful missile launches of the Trident II (D5 &D5LE) strategic weapon system", the statement said.

The Trident II strategic weapon system, originally designed with a life span to 2024, recently underwent a life extension that will keep it operational through the late 2040s, according to the US Navy.

Submarine-launched ballistic missiles Trident II comprise about 70 percent of the US nuclear deterrent, which also includes the US Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.

What is wrong at Facebook????????

Between 1969 and 1971, the US National Reconnaissance Office deployed its state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles over China in a bid to surreptitiously keep a watchful eye on a Beijing's nuclear programme.
In his article for The National Interest, the US magazine’s defence editor David Axe focused on declassified records which documented “[...] termination of the [US] ‘Tagboard’ drone system” which was tasked with spying on China in the late 1960s.
The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) released the documents on 21 March, 2019, fifty years after the Tagboard system, also known as the Lockheed-made D-21 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), entered service with the US Army.
Axe recalls that the 19-feet-wingspan D-21 was made of titanium and weighed 12 tons [10 tonnes], and that “in its early forms launched from atop a special variant of the A-12 reconnaissance plane, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]'s version of the Mach-3 [long-range, high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft] SR-71.”
“The A-12, in essence, was the booster for the drone, climbing to 80,000 feet in altitude and accelerating to Mach 3.3 before separating from the pilotless vehicle”, the author notes.
The hope was that the D-21 would help the US military to spy on strategic targets, including those in China, “more reliably than a satellite could do at the time, and without risking a human pilot”.
There were also experiments with using the airplane to launch the D-21 drone, but these were abandoned when a crewmember was killed on the 4th test flight
pic.twitter.com/G8Bx6Bh3Fg
— Mike Hankins (@Hankinstien) January 26, 2020
"The Tagboard drone provides a unique technical capability to satisfy national requirements to conduct imagery reconnaissance operations against targets hostile or potentially hostile to the United States," the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff claimed in a September 1969 memo.
Axe recalled that Tagbaord was a “complex and costly system”, with a price tag for two A-12 launch planes and 20 drones amounting to $440 million in 2019 dollars.
“A fatal crash during July 1966 abruptly ended the effort to combine the A-12 and D-21. The NRO added a rocket booster to the D-21 and migrated the system to a small fleet of lightly-modified B-52H bombers”, he noted.
Between 1969 and 1971, the NRO oversaw what it described as four “unsuccessful” D-21 missions over China, including the one on 4 March 4, 1971, when a drone failed to safely eject its film capsule.
“Although the main parachute canopy lowered the payload to the water surface, a subsequent pickup attempt by a Navy vessel was unsuccessful due to procedural errors, and the payload sank”, the NRO reported to the Defence Department at the time.
The D-21 drone on top the M-21, a variant of the A-12. During the fourth flight the D-21 hit the tail of the 21 and both planes and a pilot were lost. #aviation #AvGeek
#history #speed#USAF #CIA pic.twitter.com/ZbIkxhH0ry
— The Shadow of the Eagle (@clemente3000) December 23, 2019
In this context, Axe cited then-NRO director John McLucas as saying in an April 1971 memo that he had “become increasingly convinced” that the US military “should be expending our efforts on upgrading our satellite activities, rather than trying to continue with air-breathing vehicles”.
With the NRO concluding that “unsafe and unreliable drones” were unnecessary for strategic overhead reconnaissance , McLucas predicted the UAVs’ comeback in a different mission in the future.
"I believe that there is a weapons-carrying role for drones which ought to be exploited”, he was cited by Axe as saying.
The author concluded by recalling that a number of surviving D-21s are currently showcased at several US museums, with the wreck of another such UAV now on display in Beijing.

The new system is expected to add a fourth layer of air defence in Israel, which often suffers from aerial attacks by its enemies, such as the Hamas movement. Israel currently has separate defence systems to neutralise short-, medium- and long-range missile threats.
Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defence Systems has published a video showing its latest development, the Drone Dome system armed with a laser, in action, downing several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying as a swarm. According to Rafael, the system, mounted on an all-road vehicle, is capable of detecting nearby drones, identifying those who are not friendly, and performing a "hard kill" on hostile targets using its powerful laser.

In the video, the Drone Dome first downs a single flying drone and later turns to a swarm of three UAVs downing them one by one. Rafael noted that the system requires just one person to operate properly.
Rafael presented the Drone Dome system for the first time in 2016 , but back then it looked completely different. It was a set of equipment that could be set up in any spot, instead of being mounted on a vehicle. That model also used a "soft kill" method by jamming or interfering with the drone's command signal , forcing it to land or to switch off, instead of burning through it with a laser beam.