Firesheep is a great new plugin that works in the Firefox browser. It is easy for you to install, easy to run, and gives you, and just about anyone else, the power to do pure evil using just your browser and a laptop. With this post I'll explain some of this evil and offer some thoughts on what it means for CTOs.

The intelligence community (IC) is a $75 billion submarket within the federal complex. This alone is staggering. Being close to Washington DC, we tend to forget just how much money this really is. If this figure were a nation's gross domestic product (GDP), it would be the 60th largest country in the world and larger than 2/3 of all nations and their respective GDP output (there are currently 181 nations in the world).

Quote of the Day: “Cyberspace mirrors the maritime world both in the way it serves us and in the peril it brings.”—Rear Adm. Danilo M. Cortez, AFP, acting flag officer in command, Philippine Navy

The national awareness in our wartime footing is nothing like what our parents and grandparents experienced during prior conflicts. ... Our hunger for immediate knowledge, and gratification, is supported by our great resources. It could also become our greatest weakness long after the conventional weapons go silent.

"Fundamentally, the network's core is rotten. It's optimized for criminal activities."--Marcus H. Sachs, executive director of government affairs for national security and cyber policy, Verizon, describing cyberspace

"You can't command and control that domain [IT] unless you can see into it, sense inside it and control it."--Adm. Robert F. Willard, USN, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command

On June 25, 2010, the Army issued a request for proposals for the migration of information technologies into a cloud environment. A statement of work defines this as the “Army’s Private Cloud.” The contract reportedly could total $249 million over five years, or an average of $50 million per year. When one compares the proposed spending with the Army’s fiscal year 2009 information technology budget of $7.8 billion, the project accounts for only 0.6 percent of the Army’s budget. That is a modest start for moving in the direction in which commercial firms already are progressing at an accelerated pace.

Barely six years after it joined NATO, Bulgaria is in the throes of a major military upheaval as it strives to modernize its forces effectively amid severe budget constraints. The Black Sea nation must undo decades of stagnation as a Warsaw Pact member along with more recent missteps during its early modernization efforts.

The U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Soldier is working with a focused fervor to carry out its responsibility to refine the development of and supply virtually every piece of equipment soldiers wear or carry. As troops engage in persistent conflicts around the globe, they require a new set of technologies to achieve their missions. To ensure victory on the battlefield, these tools must make forces more lethal, survivable, sustainable and agile. Office personnel are working to ensure they do just that, whether the situation calls for a new uniform or a state-of-the-art technical device.

The great green Hulk of comic-book lore becomes superstrong when angered. Now, the U.S. Army is investigating a tool with a similar name that will allow warfighters to extend their strength, enabling them to carry heavy weights without straining their bodies—and without the need to take on a broccoli-like hue. By equipping troops with an exoskeleton, developers believe they can help reduce military members’ burdens and assist them in better conducting their missions.