19 febbraio 2019: nasce la USA SPACE FORCE

Ora è ufficiale!

Il Presidente Trump ha firmato. La Space Force Directive- 4, questo il nome, contiene l'ordine per il Pentagono per la creazione della sesta branca delle Forze Armate USA.

Dopo Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines e Coast Guard arriva la Space Force.

Certo, ci vorrà del tempo, ma la direttiva è una pietra miliare, anche se ancora non è detta l'ultima parola, che spetta infatti al Congresso.

La mia opinione in merito è che non sarà un problema. E' chiaro che le spese per creare la Space Force saranno immense ma è altrettanto vero che la recente impresa cinese (allunaggio sulla faccia oscura della Luna) e il rischio di perdere il primato mondiale nel mondo tecnologico e digitale (vedi Huawei e 5G) non sono certo passati inosservati a chi siede nel Congresso degli Stati Uniti.

Quali saranno i compiti della Space Force ce lo dice chiaro un articolo di Mike Wall pubblicato su Space.com: "The main goal of the Space Force is to secure and extent American dominance of the space domain...".  

Il primo obiettivo sarà tornare sulla Luna e quindi fare il salto verso Marte, possibilmente prima di Cina, Russia e India.

Riuscirà agli americani ciò che gli riuscì negli anni '60?

Alessandro RUGOLO


https://www.space.com/president-trump-space-force-directive.html?utm_source=sdc-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190221-sdc
http://www.difesaonline.it/mondo-militare/space-force-trump-vuole-la-sesta-forza-armata
http://www.difesaonline.it/mondo-militare/united-states-space-force-alla-conquista-dello-spazio

Ancora l'Italia sotto attacco!

Questa volta è toccato al Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare.

Risultato?

Sito irraggiungibile!

Ecco come si presentava il sito qualche ora fa

e come invece si presenta adesso

Qualche giorno fa è stata la volta di Host.it, sotto attacco DDOS dall'11 febbraio al 18 febbraio. 

Un attacco di potenza molto superiore a quelli soliti.

Che dire, ce l'hanno con noi?

Può darsi di si, può darsi di no. 

Ma noi cosa stiamo facendo per metterci al riparo?

Chiediamocelo...

e se non troviamo una risposta soddisfacente vuol dire che dobbiamo fare di più. 

Ecco perché scrivo questo articolo e lo pubblico, perché parlarne fa crescere!

Alessandro RUGOLO

A volte ritornano !!!

di Carlo Mauceli
Dopo un'assenza di due anni, il malware distruttivo Shamoon (W32. Disttrack. B) è riemersa il 10 dicembre in una nuova ondata di attacchi contro bersagli in Medio Oriente. Questi ultimi attacchi Shamoon sono stati doppiamente distruttivi dal momento che hanno coinvolto un nuovo “wiper” (Trojan. Filerase) che ha il compito di eliminare i file dai computer infetti prima che il malware Shamoon modifichi il Master Boot Record.

La notizia degli attacchi è emersa per la prima volta il 10 dicembre quando diverse aziende del mondo Oil&Gas hanno dichiarato di essere stati colpiti da un attacco informatico contro le loro infrastrutture in Medio Oriente.

A differenza dei precedenti attacchi Shamoon, questi ultimi attacchi coinvolgono un nuovo, secondo pezzo wiping malware (Trojan. filerase). Questo malware, come detto, elimina e sovrascrive i file sul computer infetto. Nel frattempo, Shamoon cancella il master boot record del computer, rendendolo inutilizzabile.

L'aggiunta del wiper Filerase rende questi attacchi più distruttivi rispetto all'uso del solo malware Shamoon. Mentre un computer infettato da Shamoon potrebbe essere inutilizzabile, i file sul disco rigido possono essere recuperabili. Tuttavia, se i file vengono prima cancellati dal malware Filerase, il recupero diventa impossibile.

Filerase è diffuso attraverso la rete della vittima da un computer iniziale utilizzando un elenco di computer remoti. Questo elenco è presente sotto forma di un file di testo ed è unico per ogni vittima, il che significa che gli attaccanti sono in grado di raccogliere queste informazioni durante una fase di ricognizione precedente al'intrusione. Questo elenco viene prima copiato da un componente denominato OCLC.exe e trasmesso, successivamente, a un altro strumento denominato spreader.exe.

Non va mai dimenticato che la metodologia di attacco segue, comunque, sempre la classica catena di attacco:

La storia:

Shamoon (W32.Disttrack) è emerso per la prima volta in 2012 quando è stato utilizzato in una serie di attacchi dirompenti contro il settore energetico Saudita.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence ha identificato notevoli similitudini tra questo attacco recente ed un attacco avvenuto nel lontano 2012 che colpì decine di migliaia di macchine di aziende appartenenti al settore energetico.

Dietro questi attacchi, Microsoft Threat Intelligence ha identificato un gruppo noto come TERBIUM, nome assegnato da Microsoft stessa secondo un criterio per cui la terminologia utilizzata si riferisce a nomi di elementi chimici.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence ha osservato che il malware utilizzato da TERBIUM, soprannominato "Depriz", riutilizza diversi componenti e tecniche già viste negli attacchi del 2012 ed è stato altamente personalizzato per ogni organizzazione.

I componenti del malware, in ogni caso, sono 3 e sono stati così decodificati:

• PKCS12 – a destructive disk wiper component
• PKCS7 – a communication module
• X509 – 64-bit variant of the Trojan/implant

Dal momento che le credenziali sono state incorporate nel malware, ovviamente, si sospetta che le credenziali stesse siano state rubate in precedenza.

Una volta che TERBIUM ha accesso all’organizzazione, la catena di infezione inizia scrivendo un file eseguibile su disco che contiene tutti i componenti necessari per eseguire l'operazione di cancellazione dei dati. Questi componenti sono codificati negli eseguibili sotto forma di immagini false.

Anche se l'entità dei danni causati da questo attacco, a livello mondiale, è ancora sconosciuta, come per tanti altri casi è possibile mitigare il rischio di attacco utilizzando sistemi, processi e soluzioni che sfruttano nuove tecnologie e che garantiscono di alzare il livello di security e di conoscere in tempo reale cosa sta accadendo sui sistemi.

È necessario, pertanto, definire una strategia di sicurezza che copra ognuna delle aree della Kill Chain Attack e, soprattutto, non pensare di difendersi con sistemi che non sfruttino soluzioni di Threat Intelligence basate su Artificial Intelligence e Machine Learning. In uno scenario profondamente mutato in cui gli attaccanti sfruttano tecnologie nuove ed avanzate, non si può più fare a meno di difendersi utilizzando sistemi dalla potenza analoga.

Dal momento che gli attacchi sono stati effettuati su architetture basate su sistemi Microsoft, mi sento in dovere di fornire le soluzioni che come Microsoft suggeriamo in questi casi. Ovviamente, ognuno può utilizzare soluzioni analoghe di altri vendor. La cosa importante, però, è ricordarsi sempre di

• proteggere dell’identità, abilitando almeno la multi factor authentication;
• proteggere i servizi di autenticazione utilizzando sistemi di analisi comportamentale;
• proteggere gli endpoint con sistemi che siano in grado di controllare i tentativi di lateral movement, di privilege escalation, di identity e ticket theft;
• aggiornare i sistemi operativi all’ultima versione di modello Enterprise abilitando tutte le funzionalità di scurezza;
• proteggere la mail attraverso l’utilizzo di soluzioni anti phishing basate sul concetto di sandboxing;
• laddove ci fossero architetture ibride, utilizzare sistemi CASB (Cloud Access Broker).

Resta chiaro che non bastano le soluzioni ed i prodotti ma serve anche e soprattutto la formazione, la sensibilità ad un tema che, ormai, purtroppo, è presente nella vita di tutti i giorni e la disponibilità a cambiare un approccio al problema più consono allo scenario attuale.

Carlo Mauceli

IBM To Acquire Red Hat, Completely Changing The Cloud Landscape And Becoming World's #1 Hybrid Cloud Provider

Press release London, UK - 28 Oct 2018:

 IBM and Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

"Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs," she said. "The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales."

"Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I'm incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise," said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. "Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience –  all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation."

This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today's cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management.

IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation. 

IBM's and Red Hat's partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM's $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.

"Today's announcement is the evolution of our long-standing partnership," said Rometty. "This includes our joint Hybrid Cloud collaboration announcement in May, a key precursor in our journey to this day."

With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat's open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.

IBM and Red Hat also will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM's hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale in helping expand their open source technology portfolio to businesses globally.

"IBM is committed to being an authentic multi-cloud provider, and we will prioritize the use of Red Hat technology across multiple clouds" said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud. "In doing so, IBM will support open source technology wherever it runs, allowing it to scale significantly within commercial settings around the world."

Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM's Hybrid Cloud team as a distinct unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat's open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and go-to-market strategy, and unique development culture. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat's current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM's senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat's headquarters, facilities, brands and practices.

"IBM's commitment to keeping the things that have made Red Hat successful - always thinking about the customer and the open source community first – make this a tremendous opportunity for not only Red Hat but also open source more broadly," said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. "Since the day we decided to bring open source to the enterprise, our mission has remained unchanged. And now, one of the biggest enterprise technology companies on the planet has agreed to partner with us to scale and accelerate our efforts, bringing open source innovation to an even greater swath of the enterprise."

Financial Details

The acquisition of Red Hat reinforces IBM's high-value model. It will accelerate IBM's revenue growth, gross margin and free cash flow within 12 months of closing. It also will support a solid and growing dividend.

The company will continue with a disciplined financial policy and is committed to maintaining strong investment grade credit ratings. The company will target a leverage profile consistent with a mid to high single A credit rating. The company intends to suspend its share repurchase program in 2020 and 2021.

At signing, the company has ample cash, credit and bridge lines to secure the transaction financing. The company intends to close the transaction through a combination of cash and debt. 

The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat. It is subject to Red Hat shareholder approval. It also is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.

Investor conference call details

IBM will host an investor conference call beginning at 8:30 a.m. EDT, Monday, October 29, 2018. The Webcast may be accessed via a link at https://www.ibm.com/investor/events/ibm-acquires-redhat102018.html. Presentation charts will be available shortly before the Webcast.

Atos delivers one of the most powerful quantum simulators in the world to Hartree Centre in the UK

Press release Paris, London, 5 February 2019

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces an agreement with the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Hartree Centre that will see one of the UK’s leading high-performance computing research facility take the first UK delivery of an Atos Quantum Learning Machine, the highest performing quantum simulator in the world.

This Quantum Learning Machine will be one of the highest-performing ever deployed by Atos and will be used to develop new quantum-based services designed to help researchers and industry prepare for the coming quantum computing revolution. These include quantum algorithm development and the first UK repository for quantum algorithms, collaborative research projects on quantum computing applications and specialist training.

This new collaboration builds on an established partnership between Atos and the Hartree Centre, which began with the UK’s first Bull Sequana X1000 supercomputer being hosted at the facility in 2017. The Hartree Centre, based at Daresbury Laboratory and part of the Sci-Tech Daresbury Campus in Cheshire, UK, also hosts the JADE national deep learning service.

Commenting on the partnership announcement, Andy Grant, Vice President, HPC & Big Data, Atos UK and Ireland said, “We are delighted to deepen our existing relationship with the Hartree Centre, which we believe will help UK industry future-proof itself for the arrival of quantum computing. Our Quantum Learning Machine as a service will be made available to any organisation wanting to learn about, and experiment, with quantum computing and understand the key opportunities and challenges this technology presents. Quantum is the future of computing and it is crucial that organisations are ready to harness the coming revolution.”

Alison Kennedy, Director of the STFC Hartree Centre, said: “We’re thrilled to be enabling UK companies to explore and prepare for the future of quantum computing. This collaboration will build on our growing expertise in this exciting area of computing and result in more resilient technology solutions being developed for industry.”

Leigh Lapworth, Head of Computational Sciences at Rolls-Royce, which will be one of the first organisations to use the quantum simulator, said: “The Quantum Learning Machine will provide a platform on which we can develop new quantum algorithms with potential impacts across our business. We have a long track-record of successful collaborations with the Hartree Centre and with the support of Atos we look forward to research that takes us in new and exciting directions.”

In November 2016, Atos launched an ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing and to be prepared for the opportunities as well as the risks that come with it. As a result of this initiative, Atos was the first to successfully model quantum noise. To date, the company has installed Quantum Learning Machines in numerous countries including Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States empowering major research programs in various sectors.

Capgemini launches ‘Perform AI'

A new portfolio of solutions to help organizations fuel innovation and deliver real business outcomes using Artificial Intelligence (by Sam Connatty)

Paris – January 28, 2019 – Capgemini today launched Perform AI, a new portfolio of solutions and services to assist organizations in achieving and sustaining tangible business outcomes by building and operating enterprise-grade artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. The portfolio provides customers with a complete set of solutions to infuse AI in their organizations, delivering operational excellence and business innovation for immersive, highly personalized experiences. Leveraging the full capabilities of the entire Group – from strategy and design through to global implementation and management – Perform AI brings together people, process, data and technology to realize superior, sustainable and trusted business performance.  

A recent publication from the Capgemini Research Institute highlighted that a mix of anxiety and ill-informed opinion is obscuring the risks and opportunities of implementing AI. Organizations therefore need a pragmatic approach to move forward. In terms of anticipated demand, IDC forecasts cognitive and AI spend will grow to $52.2 billion in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.2% over the 2016-2021 forecast period.[1]

Perform AI has been designed to address the real opportunities and the critical challenges which companies confront today, whatever their maturity on data management and AI:

• Applying AI at scale: Moving beyond proofs-of-concept and isolated deployments to industrialize AI across the enterprise, scaling the business benefits throughout the organization.
• Empowering people: Proactively managing the impact of AI initiatives on augmented workforces and seeking the best interactions between people and AI.
• Transforming operations and beyond: Applying AI-based technologies to assist, augment or automate operations, right through to reimagining business processes.
• Embedding ethics: Applying AI with an ethical and responsible approach; one that is transparent to users and customers, embeds privacy, ensures fairness, and builds trust.
• Spurring innovation for competitive advantage: Leveraging AI to introduce entirely new business models, ways of working, products, services, and experiences, offering legacy enterprises the opportunity to leapfrog their current market positions to ones previously reserved for digitally native enterprises only.

“Most companies have already started to experiment with AI to help them transform certain functions within their business, but those that adopt it effectively and throughout the enterprise will gain true competitive advantage,” comments Lanny Cohen, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Capgemini. “To realize true real-world impact and ensure sustained success, companies need to move beyond isolated initiatives to infusing AI into everything they do – from simply changing technologies to shifting the entire game. With Perform AI, we are laser-focused on applying AI to achieve mission-critical, high business impact, resulting in tangible performance outcomes for today and in the future.”

Capgemini’s Perform AI portfolio comprises four core components, affording vital flexibility needed for bespoke roadmaps through to rollout of AI at scale across a business:

1. AI ACTIVATE: Creates the strategic direction and the organization and technology platforms for where and how AI should be applied and adopted in the enterprise for maximum impact.
2. AI TRANSFORM: Delivers AI-infused performance improvements to optimize existing business processes and to create the springboard for long term growth by introducing the right AI technologies and solutions among the vast and rapidly expanding volume of tools and solutions.
3. AI REIMAGINE: Draws upon the strategy and innovation capabilities within Capgemini Invent and Capgemini’s network of Applied Innovation Exchangesto help organizations envision new products and services, customer experiences, operating and business models, and revenue streams.
4. AI ENGINEERING: Provides foundation services to ensure the enterprise’s data estate and governance deliver trusted AI solutions in production and at scale. AI Engineering addresses the operating core of AI – data underpins every stage of the transformation.

To concentrate asset and solution creation as well as expert capability development, Capgemini has created a network of cross-practice AI Centers of Excellence (CoEs). These Perform AI CoEs are now operational in France, Germany and North America, all supported by a hub CoE in India. Geographical coverage of the Perform AI CoEs will be extended throughout 2019.

Markets of primary focus for Perform AI are the Manufacturing and Financial Services sectors, as well as the Customer Experience domain. Capgemini has worked closely with its extensive ecosystem of technology partners, start-ups and academia to build AI solutions that help address these specific industry needs, including a Manufacturing intelligence platform leveraging computer vision for quality defects prevention and machine learning for failure detection; cognitive analytics to address multi-dimensional underwriting risk in the Financial Services sector; or natural language processing, conversational interfaces and computer-vision based emotions recognition to predict and understand consumers needs with unmatched certainty.

With data privacy and security emerging as some of the most important priorities for businesses, it is vital that companies balance their AI innovation with efforts to secure and maintain the trust of their customers, partners, and employees. Capgemini’s Perform AI portfolio focuses on the ability to secure data and AI platforms.

Building on its existing recognition as one of the world’s most ethical companies, Capgemini has integrated ethics into the foundations of its Perform AI portfolio.

“We have launched Perform AI to enable organizations to augment operations and potentially reinvent their business at a time when they are expected to regularly meet and exceed customers’ expectations that are higher and more diverse than ever before,” concludes Anne-Laure Thieullent, AI and Analytics Group Offer Leader, Capgemini. “Through the application of AI technologies, our Perform AI solutions will increase the speed of execution and certainty of success for our clients’ AI initiatives, which are sometimes still fragmented and not exploited to their full potential. With Perform AI and the follow up releases of this new portfolio, we are dedicated to becoming the premier AI-infused consulting and technology services company and are excited to take our clients to the next stage of their journey to the Intelligent Enterprise.”

https://www.capgemini.com/news/perform-ai/

Airbus under attack! Industrial espionage by way of Supply Chain Attack?

First of all, let’s start with the facts,

January the 30^th 2019: Airbus issues a press release announcing that the commercial sector of the company has come under cyber attack. It was a non authorized access to company data. Airbus reassures there won’t be any economic impact on the company operations.

Airbus, let us remember, is an European society with its headquarters in the Netherlands, active in the field of aircraft production and Space and Defense research. One of its activities is the cyber defense both for internal use and for its customers.

The press release continues saying that the attack is under analysis and Airbus's experts have already undertaken a number of necessary actions in order to strengthen the security measures,mitigate the impact of the attack and of course, to identify the source of the attack.

The press release ends with saying that the authorities, included Data Protection sector, have already been informed of the attack and reassuring that Airbus employees have been solicited to take the necessary precautions in order to continue their activities.

After a few days the press is already on the case.

On the 4^th of February the newspaper “Challenges” reports that according to statements coming from public sources and other sources close to the company, the “modus operandi” used by the attackers is similar to the one used by a group of Chinese cyber group. It looks like the scope of the attack was to hijack technical documents relating aircraft certifications. The attack scheme is in fact similar to the APT 10 , or even more sophisticated.

It looks like the attack started in December was aimed to affect an Airbus supplier, and then move to the real objective. This theory is based on clues and it will be difficult to prove it.

Let’s notice that the company trend in the stock exchange wasn’t apparently affected by this attack.

Anyways, what happened shows how dangerous can a supply chain attack be, especially if aimed to strike a third party, usually a supplier of the main objective, with little or no cyber defense capabilities.

ALESSANDRO RUGOLO

(english translation by Francesco Rugolo)

Pictures :  https://www.airbus.com/

To know more about the topic:

- https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2019/01/airbus-statement-on-cyber-incident.html;
- https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/transports/cyberattaque-contre-airbus-la-piste-chinoise-avancee_640396;
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/breaking-airbus-cyber-attack-believed-13955680;
- https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups.html#apt10;
- https://www.cshub.com/attacks/articles/incident-of-the-week-airbus-reports-employee-data-hack;
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3191947/data-breach/what-is-a-supply-chain-attack-why-you-should-be-wary-of-third-party-providers.html