Denmark aims for closer Nordic security ties in Arctic and Baltic Sea region

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  3 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  China’s Moon Landing: ‘New Chapter in Humanity’s Exploration of the Moon’

  By Steven Lee Myers and Zoe Mou BEIJING — China reached a milestone in space exploration on Thursday, landing a vehicle on the far side of the moon for the first time in history, the country's space agency announced. The landing of the probe, called Chang'e-4 after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology, is one in a coming series of missions that underscore the country's ambitions to join — and even lead — the space race. China landed another rover on the moon in 2013, joining the United States and the Soviet Union as the only nations to have carried out a “soft landing” there, but the Chang'e-4 is the first to touch down on the side of the moon that perpetually faces away from the Earth. The mission “has opened a new chapter in humanity's exploration of the moon,” the China National Space Administration said in an announcement on its website. The agency said the spacecraft landed at 10:26 a.m. Beijing time at its target on the far side of the moon. The probe sent back to the earth the first close-up image of the moon's far side using a relay satellite China calls “Queqiao,” or “Magpie Bridge,” the space agency said in a notice that included images it said were taken by the probe. Although a latecomer by decades to space exploration, China is quickly catching up, experts say, and could challenge the United States for supremacy in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other fields. “This space mission shows that China has reached the advanced world-class level in deep space exploration,” said Zhu Menghua, a professor at the Macau University of Science and Technology who has worked closely with the Chinese space agency. “We Chinese people have done something that the Americans have not dared try.” China now plans to begin fully operating its third space station by 2022, to put astronauts in a lunar base by later in that decade, and to send probes to Mars, including ones that could return samples of the Martian surface back to Earth. Though the moon is hardly untrodden ground after decades of exploration, a new landing is far more than just a propaganda coup, experts say. Full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/world/asia/china-change-4-moon.html

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  18 novembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - November 15, 2019

  AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Corp., Littleton, Colorado, has been awarded a ceiling amount of $3,329,600,000 single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for combined orbital operations, logistics and resiliency support services. This contract provides for operations, sustainment and enhancement activities to support the Advanced Extremely High Frequency, Milstar and Defense Satellite Communications System III programs. Work will be performed at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado; Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado; and Sunnyvale, California, and is expected to be completed by Nov. 30, 2029. This award is the result of a sole source acquisition. No funds will be obligated on the basic contract and the type of funding will be obligated on subsequent task and delivery orders. The Space and Missile System Center, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, is the contracting activity (FA8823-20-D-0001). Raytheon Co., Largo, Florida, has been awarded an $86,756,767 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Presidential and National Voice Conferencing (PNVC) Integrator contract. The PNVC capability is a new requirement for use by the president of the United States (POTUS), secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, combatant commanders and other senior leaders. The POTUS and national leadership require worldwide, secure, survivable voice conferencing capability that supersedes and improves upon the existing Milstar Survivable Emergency Conferencing Network system. The PNVC capability will incorporate improved voice quality, reduced latency, high availability, increased number of subscribers and a new conference management capability for the user community. Work will be performed at Marlborough, Massachusetts, and is expected to be completed by September 2024. This award is the result of a sole source acquisition. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $2,000,000 are being obligated at the time of the award. The Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals Contracting office, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, is the contracting activity (FA8735-20-C-0001). Bismark Construction Corp., Newark, New Jersey, has been awarded a $17,108,605 modification (P00009) to previously awarded contract FA4484-16-D-0003 for maintenance and repair services requirement contract. This modification provides for the exercise of Option Four for the period of performance Nov. 16, 2019, through Nov. 15, 2020. Work will be performed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, and is expected to be complete by Nov. 15, 2020. The total cumulative face value of the contract is $85,540,325.00. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds will be used and no funds are being obligated at the time of award. The 87th Contracting Squadron, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, is the contracting activity. AT2 LLC, Severn, Maryland, has been awarded a $14,495,776 modification (P00010) to previously awarded contract FA4890-18-C-0008 for Air Combat Command and Air Force Global Strike Command Primary Training Ranges operations and maintenance support services. This contract provides for operating materials and supplies of range threat, scoring and feedback systems. Work will be performed at Dare County Range, North Carolina; Poinsett Range, South Carolina; Grand Bay Range, Georgia; Avon Park Range, Georgia; Snyder Range, Texas; Belle Fourche Range, South Dakota; Holloman Ranges, New Mexico; Mountain Home Ranges, Idaho; and Guam Range, Guam. Work is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2022. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $13,871,092 are being obligated at the time of award. Headquarters Air Combat Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, is the contracting activity. NAVY Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc., Monroeville, Pennsylvania, is awarded a $913,536,186 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously-awarded contract N00024-19-C-2114 for Naval Nuclear Propulsion Components. Work will be performed in Monroeville, Pennsylvania (69%); and Schenectady, New York (31%). Fiscal 2020 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $584,866,256 will be obligated at time of award and funding will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. No completion date or additional information is provided on Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program contracts. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc., Monroeville, Pennsylvania, is awarded a $483,735,911 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously-awarded contract N00024-16-C-2106 for Naval Nuclear Propulsion Components. Work will be performed in Monroeville, Pennsylvania (66%); and Schenectady, New York (34%). Fiscal 2020 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $483,735,911 will be obligated at time of award and funding will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. No completion date or additional information is provided on Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program contracts. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. Raytheon Co., Integrated Defense Systems, San Diego, California, is awarded a $61,531,220 indefinite-quantity/indefinite-delivery contract for Global Positioning System-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Service (GPNTS) software support. GPNTS is used to receive, process and distribute three-dimensional position, velocity, acceleration, attitude, time and frequency in the formats required by shipboard user systems. The software support will include development, integration and test of improvements, correction of deficiencies, preparation and delivery of engineering interim/final software builds and inputs for the GPNTS software requirements and configuration baseline. The contract includes a base ordering period of five years, with a subsequent three-year option and a final two-year option for a total of 10 years should all options be exercised. The option periods, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $100,345,487. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $3,407,044 will be placed on contract and obligated at the time of award. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Work will be performed in San Diego, California, and is expected to be completed by November 2024. If all options are exercised, work could continue until November 2029. This contract was competitively procured with two offers received via the Commerce Business Daily's Federal Business Opportunities website and the NAVWAR e-Commerce Central website. The Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N00039-20-D-0021). Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc., Monroeville, Pennsylvania, is awarded a $31,801,007 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously-awarded contract N00024-19-C-2115 for Naval Nuclear Propulsion Components. Work will be performed in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Fiscal 2019 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $31,801,007 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. No completion date or additional information is provided on Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program contracts. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. General Dynamics Electric Boat, Groton, Connecticut, is awarded a $24,103,730 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously awarded contract N00024-18-C-2101 to exercise an option for engineering and technical design effort to support research and development concept formulation for current and future submarine platforms. Work will be performed in Groton, Connecticut, and is expected to be complete by October 2020. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funding in the amount of $175,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. Progeny Systems Corp.,* Manassas, Virginia, is awarded a $9,855,080 firm-fixed-price and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for services and hardware systems in support of the Undersea Warfare Decision Support Systems (USW-DSS) Command and Control program. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $50,711,886. Work will be performed in Manassas, Virginia (79%); Norfolk, Virginia (11%); Keyport, Washington (8%); Charleroi, Pennsylvania (1%); and San Diego, California(1%), and is expected to be completed by November 2020. If all options are exercised, work will continue through November 2024. Fiscal 2019 other procurement (Navy); and fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation funding in the amount of $3,752,402 will be obligated at time of award and funding in the amount of $807,804 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. In accordance with Section 1709 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that modifies 15 U.S. Code 638(r)(4), this Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase III contract is being awarded to Progeny Systems Corp., the same firm that received the SBIR award. USW-DSS provides a common set of integrated cross-platform and command decision support tools to enable integrated USW operations. The contract award is a follow-on to contract N00024-14-C-5209 for production and modernization of USW-DSS systems developed under the prior SBIR Phase III Contract. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N00024-20-C-5213). Pacific Federal Management Inc.,* Tumon, Guam, is awarded a $9,093,633 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for base operating support services at Naval Base Guam and Naval Support Activity Andersen. The maximum dollar value including the base period and four option years is $48,494,711. The work to be performed provides for all labor, supervision, management, tools, material, equipment, facilities, transportation and incidental engineering and other items necessary to accomplish all work in ground maintenance and tree trimming services for United States military facilities on Guam at various locations on Guam and Northern Marianas Islands. Work will be performed in the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Marianas area of operations, including but not limited to, Naval Base Guam (70%); and Naval Support Activity Andersen, Guam (30%), and is expected to be completed by November 2024. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Fiscal 2020 operation and maintenance (O&M), (Navy); and fiscal 2020 O&M, (family housing) contract funds in the amount of $6,707,564 for recurring work will be obligated on individual task orders issued during the base period. This contract was competitively procured via the Federal Business Opportunities website with two proposals received. NAVFAC Marianas, Guam, is the contracting activity (N40192-20-D-9000). ARMY Walsh Federal JV, Chicago, Illinois, was awarded a $77,308,000 firm-fixed-price contract to procure services for the design and construction of an 87,620 square foot Joint Regional Confinement Facility. Bids were solicited via the internet with seven received. Work will be performed in Tacoma, Washington, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 1, 2022. Fiscal 2017 and 2018 military construction, Army funds in the amount of $77,308,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle, Washington, is the contracting activity (W912DW-20-C-0002). Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., Oak Brook, Illinois, was awarded a $13,700,000 modification (P00018) to contract W912BU-15-C-0054 for dredging plants to remove the variety of material encountered in dredging. Work will be performed in Chester, Pennsylvania, with an estimated completion date of March 15, 2020. Fiscal 2020 operation and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $13,700,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Rolls-Royce Corp., Indianapolis, Indiana, has been awarded a maximum $67,076,432 requirements contract for supplies related to the upgrade of the T-56 engine from series 3.0 to series 3.5. This was a sole source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is a five-year base contract with one five-year option period. Location of performance is Indiana, with Sept. 30, 2024, performance completion date. Using military services are Air Force and Navy. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2024 defense appropriated funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Richmond, Virginia (SPE4AX-20-D-9405). Avon Engineered Fabrications, Picayune, Mississippi (SPE7MX-20-D-0015); and SMR Technologies Inc., Fenwick, West Virginia (SPE7MX-20-D-0016), are sharing a maximum $40,328,925 firm-fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment contract for landing craft air cushion skirting systems. This was a competitive acquisition with two responses received. These are three-year base contracts with two one-year option periods. Locations of performance are Mississippi and West Virginia, with a Nov. 14, 2022, performance completion date. Using military service is Navy. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2023 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Columbus, Ohio (SPE7MX-20-D-0015). Peckham Vocational Industries,** Peckham, Michigan, has been awarded a maximum $8,673,0560 modification (P00008) exercising the second, one-year option of a one-year base contract (SPE1C1-18-D-N029) with two, one-year option periods for the GEN III, Layer II, Mid-Weight Drawer. This is a firm-fixed-price contract. Location of performance is Michigan, with a Nov. 21, 2020, performance completion date. Using military services are Army and Air Force. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. *Small Business **Mandatory source https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2018396/source/GovDelivery/

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  14 août 2018 | International, C4ISR

  HOW HACKED WATER HEATERS COULD TRIGGER MASS BLACKOUTS

  WHEN THE CYBERSECURITY industry warns about the nightmare of hackers causing blackouts, the scenario they describe typically entails an elite team of hackers breaking into the inner sanctum of a power utility to start flipping switches. But one group of researchers has imagined how an entire power grid could be taken down by hacking a less centralized and protected class of targets: home air conditioners and water heaters. Lots of them. At the Usenix Security conference this week, a group of Princeton University security researchers will present a study that considers a little-examined question in power grid cybersecurity: What if hackers attacked not the supply side of the power grid, but the demand side? In a series of simulations, the researchers imagined what might happen if hackers controlled a botnet composed of thousands of silently hacked consumer internet of things devices, particularly power-hungry ones like air conditioners, water heaters, and space heaters. Then they ran a series of software simulations to see how many of those devices an attacker would need to simultaneously hijack to disrupt the stability of the power grid. Their answers point to a disturbing, if not quite yet practical scenario: In a power network large enough to serve an area of 38 million people—a population roughly equal to Canada or California—the researchers estimate that just a one percent bump in demand might be enough to take down the majority of the grid. That demand increase could be created by a botnet as small as a few tens of thousands of hacked electric water heaters or a couple hundred thousand air conditioners. "Power grids are stable as long as supply is equal to demand," says Saleh Soltan, a researcher in Princeton's Department of Electrical Engineering, who led the study. "If you have a very large botnet of IoT devices, you can really manipulate the demand, changing it abruptly, any time you want." The result of that botnet-induced imbalance, Soltan says, could be cascading blackouts. When demand in one part of the grid rapidly increases, it can overload the current on certain power lines, damaging them or more likely triggering devices called protective relays, which turn off the power when they sense dangerous conditions. Switching off those lines puts more load on the remaining ones, potentially leading to a chain reaction. "Fewer lines need to carry the same flows and they get overloaded, so then the next one will be disconnected and the next one," says Soltan. "In the worst case, most or all of them are disconnected, and you have a blackout in most of your grid." Power utility engineers, of course, expertly forecast fluctuations in electric demand on a daily basis. They plan for everything from heat waves that predictably cause spikes in air conditioner usage to the moment at the end of British soap opera episodes when hundreds of thousands of viewers all switch on their tea kettles. But the Princeton researchers' study suggests that hackers could make those demand spikes not only unpredictable, but maliciously timed. The researchers don't actually point to any vulnerabilities in specific household devices, or suggest how exactly they might be hacked. Instead, they start from the premise that a large number of those devices could somehow be compromised and silently controlled by a hacker. That's arguably a realistic assumption, given the myriad vulnerabilities other security researchers and hackers have found in the internet of things. One talk at the Kaspersky Analyst Summit in 2016 described security flaws in air conditioners that could be used to pull off the sort of grid disturbance that the Princeton researchers describe. And real-world malicious hackers have compromised everything from refrigerators to fish tanks. Given that assumption, the researchers ran simulations in power grid software MATPOWER and Power World to determine what sort of botnet would could disrupt what size grid. They ran most of their simulations on models of the Polish power grid from 2004 and 2008, a rare country-sized electrical system whose architecture is described in publicly available records. They found they could cause a cascading blackout of 86 percent of the power lines in the 2008 Poland grid model with just a one percent increase in demand. That would require the equivalent of 210,000 hacked air conditioners, or 42,000 electric water heaters. The notion of an internet of things botnet large enough to pull off one of those attacks isn't entirely farfetched. The Princeton researchers point to the Mirai botnet of 600,000 hacked IoT devices, including security cameras and home routers. That zombie horde hit DNS provider Dyn with an unprecedented denial of service attack in late 2016, taking down a broad collection of websites. Building a botnet of the same size out of more power-hungry IoT devices is probably impossible today, says Ben Miller, a former cybersecurity engineer at electric utility Constellation Energy and now the director of the threat operations center at industrial security firm Dragos. There simply aren't enough high-power smart devices in homes, he says, especially since the entire botnet would have to be within the geographic area of the target electrical grid, not distributed across the world like the Mirai botnet. But as internet-connected air conditioners, heaters, and the smart thermostats that control them increasingly show up in homes for convenience and efficiency, a demand-based attack like the one the Princeton researchers describes could become more practical than one that targets grid operators. "It's as simple as running a botnet. When a botnet is successful, it can scale by itself. That makes the attack easier," Miller says. "It's really hard to attack all the generation sites on a grid all at once. But with a botnet you could attack all these end user devices at once and have some sort of impact." The Princeton researchers modeled more devious techniques their imaginary IoT botnet might use to mess with power grids, too. They found it was possible to increase demand in one area while decreasing it in another, so that the total load on a system's generators remains constant while the attack overloads certain lines. That could make it even harder for utility operators to figure out the source of the disruption. If a botnet did succeed in taking down a grid, the researchers' models showed it would be even easier to keepit down as operators attempted to bring it back online, triggering smaller scale versions of their attack in the sections or "islands" of the grid that recover first. And smaller scale attacks could force utility operators to pay for expensive backup power supplies, even if they fall short of causing actual blackouts. And the researchers point out that since the source of the demand spikes would be largely hidden from utilities, attackers could simply try them again and again, experimenting until they had the desired effect. The owners of the actual air conditioners and water heaters might notice that their equipment was suddenly behaving strangely. But that still wouldn't immediately be apparent to the target energy utility. "Where do the consumers report it?" asks Princeton's Soltan. "They don't report it to Con Edison, they report it to the manufacturer of the smart device. But the real impact is on the power system that doesn't have any of this data." That disconnect represents the root of the security vulnerability that utility operators need to fix, Soltan argues. Just as utilities carefully model heat waves and British tea times and keep a stock of energy in reserve to cover those demands, they now need to account for the number of potentially hackable high-powered devices on their grids, too. As high-power smart-home gadgets multiply, the consequences of IoT insecurity could someday be more than just a haywire thermostat, but entire portions of a country going dark. https://www.wired.com/story/water-heaters-power-grid-hack-blackout/