Acidic Security

Chinese military experts on Tuesday suggested the use of non-lethal electromagnetic weapons, including low-energy laser devices, in expelling US warships that have been repeatedly intruding into the South China Sea in the past week. Ships from the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier strike group and America amphibious assault ship expeditionary strike group sailed together in the South China Sea on Sunday for expeditionary strike force drills, the US Pacific Fleet said on its Twitter account on Monday. This is the third time in just a week US warships are known to have trespassed into the South China Sea: US guided-missile destroyer McCampbell on March 10 trespassed into China's territorial waters in the Xisha Islands, and amphibious assault ship America and littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords sailed in operations in the South China Sea on Friday. To counter US' repeated trespasses into Chinese territorial waters, the Chinese military has the option of using new appro...

In order to cut costs for NASA’s newest supersonic, super-quiet X-plane jet, the federal agency is recycling various parts scavenged from retired jets. NASA revealed in a recent news release that the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) under construction by the federal agency and Lockheed Martin will utilize pieces of several familiar military aircraft of the past. According to the March 11 release, the agency conducted its so-called “shopping spree” at “The Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base at Tucson, Arizona, which is home to over 4,400 aircraft that are in storage or retired from the US Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army or Coast Guard. “No, we didn’t go there and have that used car lot type of approach where we got to pick and choose whatever we wanted,” Brian Griffin, the deputy operations lead for the X-59 project at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, explained in the release. He said that Air Force officials scoured the available aircraft databases at the b...

The US cleared the Coyote Block 2 counter-drone weapon for sales to American allies, the developer Raytheon said in a press release on Tuesday. "Delivering this enhanced version of the combat-proven Coyote strengthens our allies' defences against enemy drones", Raytheon Land Warfare Systems Vice President Sam Deneke said in the release. "Block 2 is fast, effective and protects troops on the battlefield". Powered by a jet engine, the new weapon can be launched from the ground to destroy drones and other aerial threats, the release said. Defence websites describe the Coyote as a 'kamikaze drone' because the machine is designed to either crash into small, unmanned aircraft or to explode nearby. The US is developing other anti-drone weapons using lasers or microwave bursts to disable the unmanned aerial weapons. In February, Raytheon announced that it had completed the first radar antenna for the US Army’s low-tier missile 

The worldwide network of telescopes, which last spring published the first ever image of a black hole, has canceled its annual observations of the cosmos due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was announced in a statement on Tuesday. This cooperation, collectively known as Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), announced that its 2020 project would be canceled due to the shutting down of the individual telescopes that make up the network. The closures come as part of the global response to the outbreak of Covid-19. "Progress on the scientific goals of the EHT Collaboration is secondary to the health and well-being of our collaboration members, our families, our institutions, and the people who work at the observatory and correlator facilities that support our efforts," representatives of the collaboration said. Due to annual weather patterns and "celestial mechanics," the network is only able to make observations in March and April. As the pandemic and ...

Lockheed Martin Corp has released a promotional video that appears to show a simulated airstrike on Russian weaponry. More than halfway into the promo, CGI footage shows strikes by Lockheed’s planes on Russia’s trademark S-400 anti-air systems and a road-mobile Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile system, as the voice-over narrates about the “ever-evolving threats” to US security. Lockheed’s new video is dedicated to the weapons manufacturer’s Advanced Development Programmes, also known as Skunk Works, the elite division tasked with top-secret research and development. It appears to show mostly concepts of new machines, with the only real-life aircraft being the troubled F35 jet. The S-400 (NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler) is one of the most advanced anti-missile weapons currently made; it has caused a great deal of concern in the US over its acquisition by Turkey and India, with Washington repeatedly threatening to retaliate should they move ah...

Slack developers fixed a vulnerability that allowed to capture other people’s accounts. The problem was discovered in November 2019 by information security researcher Ivan Castodio (Evan Custodio). Castodio discovered the vulnerability using HTTP Request Smuggling attacks and proprietary tools. In essence, the bug allowed to steal session cookies through HTTP Request Smuggling and establish control over other people’s accounts. The researcher writes that the vulnerability was “extremely critical” for both Slack and all clients and organizations using the platform. The fact is that exploiting the bug could lead to “serious compromise of the majority of customer data,” and attackers could create automated bots that would carry out continuous attacks, intercept victims’ sessions and steal everything they could get to. The scheme of such an attack can be seen below. Slack developers quickly fixed this vulnerability, and the researcher was paid $ 6,5...

The president of the Senate, Alexis Thambwe Mwamba was critical of the security authorities in Kinshasa following the outbreak of urban crime orchestrated by bandits known as "kuluna". In his opening speech of the March parliamentary session, he somehow denounced the passivity of the state which, according to his question, would be limited to securing only Gombe, which is one of the 24 communes of the capital. " We also regret the increase in urban banditry, in cities and major cities of the country, and especially in the city of Kinshasa: complaints of kidnappings, car theft, expatriates and national attacks, are happening to us Plus. The state seems overwhelmed and of of individuals want to impose their law on us. Seeing them act like this, we wonder if in Kinshasa the state is limited to Gombe, and again, we urge law enforcement, to solve this problem ", he said. He also asked " the Senate Defense and Security Committee to investigate possible ways to...