Taking a look at what stories were hot in 2010
As I wrap up the year and look at the top posts it’s obvious that space and IT security news have been the hottest stories. NASA’s new Sun-watching satellite was the top story but there was plenty of other NASA news in this transitional year for the agency. On the IT security front, there were a variety of interesting items in the encryption and botnet areas. In order of popularity, these are the top stores from Layer 8 this year.
NASA in April showed off the amazing first pictures of the Sun taken from its 6,800lb Solar Dynamics Observatory flying at an orbit 22,300 miles above Earth. The first images show a variety of activity NASA says provide never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.
21 critical future NASA missions
Boeing shows off commercial spacecraft
Boeing in July released the first public glimpse of the commercial spacecraft it is working on under an $18 million contract with NASA. Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 can hold seven crew and will be bigger than Apollo but smaller than NASA’s Orion, and be able to launch on a variety of different rockets, including Atlas, Delta and Falcon. It will use a simple systems architecture and existing, proven components, Boeing stated.
NASA looks at horizontal, railgun-like rocket launcher
NASA in September said it was looking hard at a way to blast spacecraft horizontally down an electrified track or gas-powered sled and into space hitting speeds of about Mach 10. The craft would then return and land on a runway by the launch site. The rail launcher, known Advanced Space Launch System is one of a few new launch systems a team of engineers from Kennedy Space Center and several other NASA centers are looking at that would use existing cutting-edge technologies to offer the space agency a next generation launcher to the stars, NASA stated.
IBM takes dim view of EU claims “being made by Microsoft and its satellite proxies”
IBM responded angrily to the claims behind investigations being brought by the European Union today that the company has abused its dominant market position in mainframe computers. IBM stated it intends to cooperate fully with any inquiries from the European Union. “But let there be no confusion whatsoever: there is no merit to the claims being made by Microsoft and its satellite proxies. IBM is fully entitled to enforce its intellectual property rights and protect the investments we have made in our technologies. Competition and intellectual property laws are complementary and designed to promote competition and innovation, and IBM fully supports these policies. But IBM will not allow the fruits of its innovation and investment to be pirated by its competition through baseless allegations.”
NASA identifies Top Ten space junk missions
While the recently released US National Space Policy has given NASA and the Defense Dept., new impetus to work toward removing space debris, the space agency in July outlined the top 10 reasons so much junk is out there in the first place. NASA’ s Orbital Debris Program Office this month said that while over 4,700 space missions have taken place worldwide since the beginning of what it called the Space Age, only 10 missions account for one-third of all cataloged objects currently in Earth orbit and of that, six of these 10 debris producing events occurred within the past 10 years. Debris from China the US and former Soviet Union spacecraft make up majority of junk floating in space. Approximately 19,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to exist, NASA stated.
Boeing gets to build unmanned aircraft that can stay aloft for 5 years
One of the more unique unmanned aircraft took a giant step toward reality in September when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency inked an agreement with Boeing to build the SolarEagle, a plane capable of remaining at heights over 60,000 feet for over five years. Boeing says the first SolarEagle under the$89 million contract could fly as early as 2014.
Military wants Holy Grail of secure encryption technology
It’s a data encryption technology that protects sensitive data but at the same time lets computations be performed on it all without the data being decrypted. Called fully homomorphic encryption it is known as the Holy Grail of encryption systems by some security experts and it is one of the key technologies scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency want for future projects.
NASA’s Juno: An armored tank heading for Jupiter
When it comes to ensuring that its upcoming Juno spacecraft can survive its mission, NASA is surrounding the spacecraft’s electronic innards with titanium to ward off radiation. Juno’s so-called radiation vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds), has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, are about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and weigh 18 kilograms (40 pounds). About the size of an SUV’s trunk – the vault encloses Juno’s command and data handling box, power and data distribution unit and about 20 other electronic assemblies, according to NASA.
Beyond the petaflop
Not known for taking the demure route, researchers at DARPA this year announced a program aimed at building computers that exceed current peta-scale computers to achieve the mind-altering speed of one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second.
What would your ultimate network security look like?
Is it possible that given a clean slate and likely millions of dollars, engineers could come up with the ultimate in secure network technology? The scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) think so and this week announced the Clean‐Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) program that looks to lean heavily on human biology to develop super-smart, highly adaptive, supremely secure networks.
FTC takes out notorious porn- and botnet-spewing ISP
The Federal Trade Commission in May got a judge to effectively kill off the Internet Service Provider 3FN who the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing and all manner of malicious Web content. The ISP’s computer servers and other assets have been seized and will be sold by a court and the operation has been ordered to give back $1.08 million to the FTC.
US looking for technology to quash malicious insider threats
Because so-called trusted insiders are a massive threat to the security of corporate and military resources, it may take an industrial strength technology to mitigate the issue. That’s where The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) comes in. The agency in May issued a call for automated technologies that can sniff out and alert others to people with access to sensitive information and information systems who may be looking to maliciously damage, steal or change data or programs.
HTTPS Everywhere gets Firefox Firesheep protection
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in November said it rolled out a version of HTTPS Everywhere that offers protection against “Firesheep” and other tools that seek to exploit webpage security flaws. Hitting the streets in October, Firesheep caused a storm of controversy over its tactics, ethics and Web security in general. Firesheep sniffs unencrypted cookies sent across open WiFi networks for unsuspecting visitors to Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and lets the user take on those visitors’ log-in credentials.
Is ubiquitous encryption technology on the horizon?
Will ubiquitous encryption of important network traffic ever happen? A group of researchers at July’s Usenix Security Symposium talked about a technology they say could make end-to-end encryption of TCP traffic the default, not the exception. The group, made of mostly Stanford University researchers, will talk up a TCP extension known as tcpcrypt. Implemented in the transport layer, tcpcrypt protects legacy applications and provides backwards compatibility with legacy TCP stacks and middleboxes, the group says.
Who really sets global cybersecurity standards?
Herding wild cats may be easier than settling issues or making over-arching decisions that affect international cybersecurity. In an August report that was critical about how the US will face global cybersecurity events, the Government Accountability Office identified 19 global organizations” whose international activities significantly influence the security and governance of cyberspace.”
Follow Michael Cooney on Twitter: nwwlayer8
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