Aerospace

National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

MITRE Gets $29m For First Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

MITRE Corporation has been awarded $29 million from the U.S. Commerce Department for the nation’s first federally funded National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), according to a statement by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST). The contract charges MITRE with the job of operating the federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in the areas of research, development, engineering and technical support; operations management; and facilities management. This is the first FFRDC dedicated to enhancing the security of the nation’s information systems, NIST said.  The NCCoE was established in 2012 in partnership with NIST, the state of Maryland and Montgomery County, Md.  It brings together experts from industry, government and academia to develop  integrated cyber security solutions using existing, commercially available technology. “As the principal champion of the digital economy in the federal government, the Commerce Department is committed to defending our nation’s digital infrastructure from cyberattacks and helping American companies strengthen […]

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Analog Devices MEMS

IEEE Issues Standard For Sensors, Tiny Machines

A new standard published by the IEEE may accelerate the spread and use of the Internet of Things: providing a common reference to govern the performance of  microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS.   The standard, IEEE 2700-2014, was recently approved by the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Standards Board. It will provide a common methodology for specifying the performance of tiny sensors that are becoming more and more common in consumer electronics and other industries. That should make it easier for vendors , including Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to begin integrating two or more sensors without having to worry about integration challenges. The standards apply to a wide range of small sensors that currently populate everything from mobile phones to wearable devices like Apple’s newly announced smart watch. These include accelerometers, magnetometers, gyrometers and gyroscopes, barometers and other pressure sensors, humidity sensors, temperature sensors, ambient light sensors and proximity sensors, IEEE said. “The industry has been struggling […]

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Wateringhole Attack Targets Auto and Aerospace Industries | AlienVault

If you’re in the automotive, manufacturing or aerospace industries: beware. Hackers are targeting you and your colleagues with sophisticated, watering-hole style attacks. That, according to a blog post by Jamie Blasco, a noted security researcher at the firm AlienVault. Blasco has written a blog post describing what he says is a compromise of a website belonging to a publisher of “software used for simulation and system engineering” in the three vertical industries.   According to Blasco, after compromising the web site, the attackers added code that loaded a malicious Javascript program dubbed “Scanbox” that is used for reconnaissance and exploitation of web site visitors. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of watering hole attacks here.] Scanbox installs malicious software on the computers it infects – typically keyloggers that record users’ interactions with the infected site and capture online credentials like usernames and passwords. However, the framework also does extensive reconnoitering of victim computers: compiling an in-depth […]

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