chemicalweapons
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Olympic hackers may be attacking chemical warfare prevention labs
The team behind the 2018 Winter Olympics hack is still active, according to security researchers -- in fact, it's switching to more serious targets. Kaspersky has discovered that the group, nicknamed Olympic Destroyer, has been launching email phishing attacks against biochemical warfare prevention labs in Europe and Ukraine as well as financial organizations in Russia. The methodology is extremely familiar, including the same rogue macros embedded in decoy documents as well as extensive efforts to avoid typical detection methods.
New compound destroys chemical weapons faster than ever
In 2013, the Syrian government agreed to destroy its stores of chemical weapons, following reports that it had dropped sarin, a torturous and lethal nerve gas, on a rebel-held town earlier that year. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, signed by 190 nations (including the US and Syria), bars any country from creating, using or storing chemical weapons. Still, activists report even today attacks of chlorine gas in Syria, and chemical weapons remain a global issue. If the world can't eradicate chemical warfare completely, science will try to neutralize it: Today a team from Illinois' Northwestern University outlined the specifics of a manmade compound that inactivates nerve gas within minutes.
Flying suicide bomber drones could be almost unstoppable
If you thought the 12-gauge shotgun-wielding AutoCopter was bad news, imagine one of the little menaces in the hands of a terrorist and strapped with several pounds of explosives -- or worse, biological, chemical, or radiological payloads. Several experts are warning that we are nearly defenseless against such attacks, even though terrorists have already shown a propensity for using such tactics in the Middle East and South America, and are known to have purchased so-called "drone" airplanes capable of high-precision navigation even over long distances. One scenario that is particularly disturbing involves a fleet of drones or robotic helicopters launched from an off-shore freighter, sent en masse to attack a large gathering like a sporting event where stampeding from panic would likely cause more deaths than the bombs themselves. The Pentagon is supposedly working on an drone-killing drone of its own, called Peregrine, that would patrol the skies and intercept any hostile aircraft -- but the main problem seems to be finding, not destroying these things, and you'd need a whole lot of Peregrines to cover every potential target in the US.[Via Phys Org]
