China has established its bona fides as an international maritime power with its participation in counterpiracy operations off the Horn of Africa. The emerging Asian maritime force contributed many different types of vessels as it learned how to support distant deployments. Its participation in the multinational effort also served to showcase some new ships and capabilities that may define Chinese naval power in the coming years.

The United States faces the likelihood of a “destructive cyber attack” in the future as malevolent digital capabilities proliferate among a range of adversaries, says the head of the U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, USA. He warns that nation-states and other malefactors now “can use this as a way of applying their will and power against our country in an asymmetric manner.”

The U.S. Marine Corps now has its first fully assembled Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) system and is working to overcome past difficulties to put the asset in warfighters' hands. Plans to upgrade multiple radar capabilities with the single system hit some snags over the past few years, but developers are back on track after finding solutions to the problems.

On September 15th, 2010, The Honorable John G. Grimes was presented with the AFCEA David Sarnoff Award. This award was established by AFCEA as the organization's highest honor, to recognize individuals who have made lasting and significant contributions to global peace. Recipients have demonstrated a sustained and personal commitment to furthering communications, electronics, and information technologies toward achieving a more secure tomorrow.

I just finished (again) a portion of Jeff Thull's Mastering the Complex Sale (see www.primeresource.com to order a copy). I see direct applicability to the intell community sales process, which - as readers of this blog know, typically the ultimate in complex selling.

Most people distrust the security of all websites equally. But in reality, Web devotees can take simple precautions to ensure their safety while researching, shopping, downloading or playing browser games such as Texas Hold’em.

While anecdotes abound about job opportunities lost over something posted online, new research reveals that the risk is greater than previously known. One survey revealed that 70 percent of recruiters have eliminated a candidate based on online text, photos or videos.

Give two cents—get big prizes. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), in partnership with ChallengePost, launched Challenge.gov on September 7 at the Gov 2.0 Summit 2010 in Washington, D.C. The free online challenge platform invites the general public to propose solutions to government challenges, including the U.S. Army’s push for new training and simulation tools utilizing artificial intelligence.

A good hacker knows that a good hack involves three things: 1. Vulnerability 2. Exploitation 3. Maintenance of access Talking to that secretary gave us a lot of information -- the antivirus vendor and version of Internet Explorer being the most important among other things. This tells us what the system is vulnerable to -- in this case IE6 vulnerabilities. Knowing the antivirus lets us know what vulnerabilities will be detected or stopped unless they are re-written or modified. With very little work we can probably find a way to circumvent any signatures based antivirus for a payload and a working exploit on a system with a profile similar to that described by the secretary. Now we have both a vulnerability and a method with which we will exploit it. Finally, the secretary informed us that patches to systems are done on Tuesdays -- so we can have up to a week after successful exploitation to develop a system to maintain access either through reverse shells or an autonomous setup, which should be easy to do once we are in and get the lay of the network. It's very easy to find and package exploits with the wide availability of large databases of viruses and exploits...

The Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) is working to keep U.S. citizens safe from dirty bombs by conducting exercises on the other side of the world. Members representing the initiative recently wrapped up a three-scenario tabletop exercise in Mongolia to help the country prevent terrorists from obtaining its nuclear or radiological material.