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Enlarge / The flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iranian state hackers got caught with their pants down recently when researchers uncovered more than 40GB of data, including training videos showing how operatives hack adversaries’ online accounts and then cover their tracks.

The operatives belonged to ITG18, a hacking group that overlaps with another outfit alternatively known as Charming Kitten and Phosphorous, which researchers believe also works on behalf of the Iranian government. The affiliation has long targeted US presidential campaigns and US government officials. In recent weeks, ITG18 has also targeted pharmaceutical companies. Researchers generally consider it a determined and persistent group that invests heavily in new tools and infrastructure.

In May, IBM’s X-Force IRIS security team obtained the 40GB cache of data as it was being uploaded to a server that hosted multiple domains known to be used earlier this year by ITG18. The most telling contents were training videos that captured the group’s tactics, techniques, and procedures as group members performed real hacks on email and social media accounts belonging to adversaries.

Enlarge / Northrop Grumman successfully launched its Minotaur IV Rocket into orbit on Wednesday morning. (credit: Northrop Grumman)

Welcome to Edition 3.08 of the Rocket Report! We are now approaching the middle of the 2020 Mars launch window, and it appears as though we will see the UAE, China, and United States all launch missions to the red planet during the last 10 days of the month. Exciting times ahead!

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Chinese Kuaizhou-11 launch ends in failure. The launch of a new Chinese Kuaizhou-11 commercial solid rocket ended in failure last Friday, resulting in the loss of two satellites, SpaceNews reports. Terse reports from Chinese media state that the specific cause of the failure is "under further analysis and investigation."

Enlarge / Average temperatures from March 19 to June 20. (credit: NASA/EO)

Generally speaking, 2020 has been a hell of a year. But in Siberia, there is an additional reason to make comparisons to the inferno: record-breaking warmth and its consequences. Wildfires have burned about 8,000 square miles, aided by a bumper crop of silk moths consuming the needles off conifers. And slumping permafrost also contributed to a massive diesel spill when a tank on unstable ground burst.

The immediate cause of this extreme year was last winter’s jet stream pattern, which kept Siberia mild from later winter into spring, melting ice and snow early and boosting the warmth further. Then in June, a stubborn high pressure set up, as a northward wiggle of the jet stream brought warmer air from the south into Siberia. It was during this heatwave that the Russian town of Verkhoyansk apparently hit 38°C (100°F)—a first for any station above the Arctic Circle.

As with many extreme weather events in recent years, a team of scientists has completed a rapid analysis of the role of climate change in all this. The scientists analyzed both that record high temperature and the warm January-to-June across the region, concluding “in both cases that this event would have effectively been impossible without human-induced climate change.”