Shuttle set for next Thursday!

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA will try to launch space shuttle Discovery next week following a four-month delay.
Discovery's final liftoff is set for Thursday afternoon. Senior managers voted unanimously Friday on the new launch date.


Discovery has been grounded since the beginning of November. Cracks in the external fuel tank were discovered following a launch attempt that was foiled by leaking hydrogen gas. It's taken this long to understand and repair the cracking.
Discovery will carry six astronauts and a humanoid robot, along with a full load of supplies, to the International Space Station. One of the human crew is a substitute, replacing an astronaut who was injured last month in a bicycle crash.

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Cyber Command Code Cracked ...

CW:

A security researcher said on Thursday he was the first to crack the code embedded in the seal of the U.S. Cyber Command (Cybercom), the group responsible for protecting the country's military networks from attack.

Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher with antivirus vendor Panda Security, said that the characters visible in a gold ring on Cybercom's official seal represent the MD5 hash of the group's mission statement. MD5 is a 128-bit cryptographic hash most often used to verify file integrity.

A representative of Cybercom confirmed that Correll had it right. " Mr. Correll is correct...it's a MD5 hash," said Lt. Commander Steve Curry of the U.S. Navy, in an e-mail.

"It wasn't very difficult," said Correll, adding that thanks to the clue on Wired.com's Danger Room blog, it took him just a few minutes to figure out that the characters -- 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a -- were the hash value for Cybercom's mission statement.

"I knew right away it was an MD5 hash, and I was fairly confident that it wasn't a specific file," said Correll, adding that security professionals will often use an MD5 hash as reminders, or to verify that a file's contents after downloading match the original edition.

Correll said he figured out the mystery shortly after 10 a.m. PT Wednesday, within an hour of Wired.com publishing its story.

At least one other code-breaker came up with the same solution. Buried in the nearly 500 comments added to the Wired.com story was the solution, posted Wednesday at 12:46 p.m. PT by someone identified only as "jemelehill".

In a follow-up story, Wired.com credited jemelehill with first decoding the message.

"Information security professionals are very challenge driven," said Correll, so tackling the problem was fun...while it lasted. "Absolutely, this was definitely fun," he said.

Correll is familiar with code-breaking problems, since Panda regularly sponsors secret code challenges. The next challenge is scheduled to go live at 3:00 a.m. ET Saturday, 12:00 a.m. PT.

The MD5 value is a hash of Cybercom's 58-word mission statement, Correll noted on his blog: "USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."


READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Wow ...

Thanks to Kurpav for passing this on to me.

U.S. using "technical means" to keep an eye on Egypt

The U.S. military and intelligence community are using "national technical means" in the skies over Egypt to gather information about the demonstrations and the deployment of Egyptian security forces.
The phrase "national technical means" is used by the U.S. government to generally refer to the use of reconnaissance satellites or other assets to gather imagery or signals intelligence.

A senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the operation confirmed the intelligence gathering, but declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

The official declined to say to what extent the Egyptian government is aware of the activity. The official would not say specifically which intelligence gathering elements were being used, but indicated operations were being conducted in a manner that would not be visible to the Egyptian populace.

The official said the decision to use intelligence gathering assets came in part after the initial violence erupted in the early days of the Cairo demonstrations.