Month: July 2017

(credit: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI have issued a joint report providing details of malware attacks targeting employees of companies that operate nuclear power plants in the US, including the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, the New York Times reports. The attacks have been taking place since May, as detailed in the report issued by federal officials last week that was sent out to industry.

The "amber" alert to industry—the second highest level of severity for these types of reports from the FBI and DHS—noted that the attacks had been focused on employees' personal computers but had not managed to jump to control systems. Administrative computers and reactor control systems in most cases are operated separately, and the control networks are generally "air-gapped"—kept disconnected from networks that attach to the Internet.

There is no evidence that information on plant operations was exposed. FBI and DHS analysts have not been able to determine the nature of the malware planted by the attempted hacks, which used a "spear-phishing" campaign targeting senior industrial control engineers at nuclear facilities. The tailored e-mails contained fake résumés, and appeared to be from people seeking control engineering jobs, according to the report seen by the Times.

Enlarge / Red's teaser image. (credit: RED)

RED, the ultra high-end camera company with a flare for dramatic product designs, has announced an Android smartphone called the "RED Hydrogen." The press release is very light on details and written in RED's typical maximum-hype style, declaring that phone "shatters the mold of conventional thinking" and "features nanotechnology." There are a few details we can try to translate into English, though.

First up, I'm not even quite sure what the phone's official name is. The website calls it the "RED Hydrogen," while the "Product Detail" PDF calls it the "RED Hydrogen One." The tag line calls this device a "Holographic media machine in your pocket" and says the 5.7-inch display "seamlessly switched between traditional 2D content, holographic multi-view content, 3D content, and interactive games." So presumably, like a Nintendo 3DS or HTC Evo 3D, this will come with some kind of special autostereoscopic 3D display.

The talk of holography is a reference to something called "RED Hydrogen 4-view content (H4V)" which sounds like a new proprietary format from RED, but the company hasn't defined or announced H4V anywhere as far as we can tell. "Hydrogen" seems to be the branding for whatever this new imaging format is. The phone is also the "Hydrogen media machine," and, with a future accessory, you'll be able to record a "Hydrogen format holographic image." The release goes on to call the phone a "Control center for the hydrogen system" and will integrate with RED's cameras as a "user interface and monitor."

Enlarge / Vice President Mike Pence addresses NASA employees on Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. (credit: NASA)

As he continues to visit key space facilities around the country, Vice President Mike Pence spent a few hours at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday. During the visit, Pence spoke to the NASA workforce inside the iconic Vertical Assembly Building and, for the most part, gave his stump speech in which he and President Trump vow to restore US leadership in space.

Within the remarks, which mentioned "leadership" 18 times, there were a few nuggets of news. The recently announced National Space Council will convene for its first meeting before the end of summer, Pence said. And he also offered a few more specifics about his overall goal for NASA's exploration program. "Our nation will return to the Moon, and we will put American boots on the face of Mars," he said. It was not clear whether Pence intends for humans to return to the lunar surface. Most likely, not too much should be read into this statement, as it seems less of a concrete policy proposal and more of a platitude at this time.

What seemed more significant was Pence's repeated references to "commercial space," which two Republican sources indicated to Ars essentially referred to the kind of contracting NASA used to fund its commercial cargo and crew programs. Pence seems intent on pushing NASA toward the fixed-price model of contracting, in which the government buys a service—such as launch—from the commercial sector. This differs from the past, in which NASA might develop a technology, and then pay industry to develop it, or otherwise enter in an agreement where NASA pays for the costs of development, plus a fee.