Russian ships in old Arctic NATO base set alarms bells ringing

 

The rocky relations have led some to criticise the shutting down of Olavsvern Naval Base, a massive complex burrowed into a mountain near the northern town of Tromsoe, that has been closed since 2009.

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“We sold the only base worthy of the name that we had up there. It’s pure madness,” former vice admiral Einar Skorgen, who commanded Norway’s northern forces, told AFP.

Skorgen and other critics say Norway has robbed itself of a crucial foothold in the far north, forcing its submarines to travel hundreds of extra miles from their bases to defend the region.

Cyber War Underway

Certainly we hear about eBay being hacked. In fact, it was just revealed that a second security flaw exists. And, we all heard about the Chinese indictments last week. Don’t assume, however, that this means we are on top of the problem. Rather, we (at best) are top of the tip, almost oblivious to the enormous iceberg underneath. This was made plain in recent reporting by Bill Gertz, perhaps America’s preeminent national security reporter. Gertz is the reporter who initially broke the story on my Pentagon findings that there was evidence of financial terrorism at work in the 2008 market collapse.

Hacker uses an Android to remotely attack and hijack an airplane

 

The Hack in the Box (#HITB2013AMS) security conference in Amsterdam has a very interesting lineup of talks [pdf]. One that jumped out was the Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series presented by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs in Germany. According to the abstract, “This presentation will be a practical demonstration on how to remotely attack and take full control of an aircraft, exposing some of the results of my three years research on the aviation security field. The attack performed will follow the classical methodology, divided in discovery, information gathering, exploitation and post-exploitation phases. The complete attack will be accomplished remotely, without needing physical access to the target aircraft at any time, and a testing laboratory will be used to attack virtual airplanes systems.