U.S. Sells GBU-39 Bunker Busters to Israel

The Israel Air Force used a new bunker buster missile that it recently received  from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.

The missile, called the GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small-diameter bomb for low-cost, high-precision and low collateral damage strikes.

Israel received approval from Congress to purchase 1,000 units in September and defense officials said on Sunday that the first shipment had arrived earlier this month and was used successfully in penetrating underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza Strip during the heavy aerial bombardment of Hamas infrastructure on Saturday. It was also used in Sunday’s bombing of tunnels in Rafah.

The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113-kg. bomb has the same penetration capabilities as a normal 900-kg. bomb, although it has only 22.7 kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 meters long, its small size increases the number of bombs an aircraft can carry and the number of targets it can attack in a sortie.

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Tests conducted in the US have proven that the bomb is capable of penetrating at least 90 cm. of steel-reinforced concrete. The GBU-39 can be used in adverse weather conditions and has a standoff range of more than 110 km. due to pop-out wings.

Also Sunday, Military Intelligence’s Psychological Warfare Department broke into radio broadcasts in Gaza and warned Palestinian civilians not to cooperate with Hamas terrorist activity.

Palestinians reported that they received phone calls to their cellular phones and landlines from the IDF. The phone call, the Palestinians said, conveyed a recorded message ordering the immediate evacuation of homes that were next to Hamas infrastructure or being used by the terrorist organization.

On Sunday, head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration Col. Moshe Levy was interviewed by several Arab news outlets during which he stressed that Israel was not against the Palestinian public in Gaza but was operating against Hamas.

Defense officials said Sunday that Israel would, however, not hesitate to target the homes of civilians who protected Hamas terrorists throughout the operation.

“We will go after every Hamas operative, no matter where he is,” one official said. “We urge the Palestinians not to cooperate with terrorists.”

Genetic Engineering Done at Home!

OK, this is pretty scary stuff, considering the possible implications for screw-ups and the intentional creation of killer viruses and bacteria.
Imagine a deadly virus that is just as easily passed along as the common rhinovirus (common cold), the result of which would make the plague look like a skinned knee…….

SAN FRANCISCO – The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.

Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.

“People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process,” she said.

So far, no major gene-splicing discoveries have come out anybody’s kitchen or garage.

But critics of the movement worry that these amateurs could one day unleash an environmental or medical disaster. Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage.

Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves “biohackers” — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits.

In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive.

Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow.

Cowell said such unfettered creativity could produce important discoveries.

“We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a game,” he said.

Patterson, the computer programmer, wants to insert the gene for fluorescence into yogurt bacteria, applying techniques developed in the 1970s.

She learned about genetic engineering by reading scientific papers and getting tips from online forums. She ordered jellyfish DNA for a green fluorescent protein from a biological supply company for less than $100. And she built her own lab equipment, including a gel electrophoresis chamber, or DNA analyzer, which she constructed for less than $25, versus more than $200 for a low-end off-the-shelf model.

Jim Thomas of ETC Group, a biotechnology watchdog organization, warned that synthetic organisms in the hands of amateurs could escape and cause outbreaks of incurable diseases or unpredictable environmental damage.

“Once you move to people working in their garage or other informal location, there’s no safety process in place,” he said.

Some also fear that terrorists might attempt do-it-yourself genetic engineering. But Patterson said: “A terrorist doesn’t need to go to the DIYbio community. They can just enroll in their local community college.”

Intelligence Community’s Wet Dream: Micro Air Vehicles

This video demonstrates the various functions that MAV’s might perform on the battlefield for the military or for the intelligence community in practice, although I dont think devices of this advanced level are being used yet, I have no doubt that they are near.

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U.S. Largest Source of Malware

American websites host more malware and computers relay more spam than any other country, the latest security report showed.

As evidence of this, when an American Internet company, accused of collaborating with spammers and hackers, was disconnected from the net in November, the level of spam staggered down 75 percent.

The ‘Security Threat Report 2009′ was just published by Sophos, the U.K.-based IT security and control firm, which examined the threat landscape over the last twelve months, and predicted the emerging cybercrime trends for 2009.

Too many compromised computers

“Not only is the U.S. relaying the most spam because too many of its computers have been compromised and are under the control of hackers, but it’s also carrying the most malicious Web pages,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “We would like to see the States making less of an impact on the charts in the coming year. American computers, whether knowingly or not, are making a disturbingly large contribution to the problems of viruses and spam affecting all of us today.”

Sophos’s research reveals that in 2008, organized criminal gangs tripled their attacks against innocent websites, injecting malicious code to infect visiting home users and businesses.

In addition, 2008 has seen concerted campaigns by hackers to pose as legitimate anti-virus vendors, creating new professional-looking websites and applications every day with the intention of scaring users into believing that their computers have been compromised.

On average, five new scareware websites were identified each day by Sophos, with the figure peaking at more than 20 per day on occasion.

Trusted networks targeted

The report also documented the major Internet attacks of 2008, and showed a rise in hackers spamming out malicious attachments, designed to compromise PCs in order to steal identities, money and resources. By the end of 2008, Sophos was tracking five times more malicious attacks arriving through files attached to e-mails than at the start of the year.

Spammers and malware authors have shown interests in websites such as Facebook – hacking into innocent users’ accounts to take advantage of trusted social networks and send spam and malware.

“The last year proved beyond doubt that Internet hacking gangs are organised like never before, often working across borders to steal money and data from unsuspecting users. The volume of attacks has increased, with hackers using automated systems to break into vulnerable websites or generate new variants of their malware,” said Cluley.

“People need to wake up to the reality that the completely legitimate Web site they are visiting could be harbouring a dangerous malware infection planted by hackers. As we enter 2009, we are not expecting to see these assaults diminish. As economies begin to enter recession it will be more important than ever for individuals and businesses to ensure that they on guard against Internet attack,” he said.

Internet attacks are overwhelmingly orchestrated via networks of innocent home computers that have–unknown to their owners–been commandeered by hackers. Sophos urges home users and businesses to properly defend their personal computers with up-to-date anti-virus software, security patches and firewalls.

Statistics and findings

• Biggest malware threats – SQL injection attacks against websites and the rising tide of scareware.

• New Web infections – one new infected Web page discovered by Sophos every four and a half seconds (Three times faster than in 2007).

• Malicious e-mail attachments – five times more at end of 2008 than at the beginning.

• U.S. hosts the most malware on the Web (37 percent), usurping China’s position in 2007.

• U.S. computers relay the most spam (17.5 percent).

• Increasing allegations of state-sponsored cybercrime, as China, North Korea, Russia and Georgia amongst those accused of espionage and assaults via the Internet.

Top malware-hosting countries

In 2007, China was responsible for hosting more than 50 percent of all Web-based malware. This position was taken over by the U.S. in 2008.

The top ten malware-hosting countries in 2008 are:

1. U.S. 37.0 percent

2. China (including HK) 27.7 percent

3. Russia 9.1 percent

4. Germany 2.3 percent

5. South Korea 2.1 percent

6. Ukraine 1.8 percent

7. United Kingdom 1.7 percent

8. Turkey 1.5 percent

9. Czech Republic 1.3 percent

10. Thailand 1.2 percent

Other malware-hosting countries in Asia are Malaysia (0.1 percent), Japan (0.1 percent), Singapore (less than 0.1 percent). The spam-relaying countries are Philippines (0.9 percent), Japan (0.6 percent), Australia (0.6 percent), and Singapore (0.3 percent).

Dead Sea Scrolls Get Digitized

The deteriorating and much sought-after Dead Sea scrolls are being digitized and will be made available to the public and researchers on the Internet, Israel authorities announced this past week.

Israel Antiquities Authority, the keeper of the scrolls, said it has begun the two-year process to digitally photograph every fragment of the more than 2,000-year-old ancient text.

High-tech digital technology will not only help preserve the manuscripts and make it available to a wider audience, but will also help reveal text that is not visible to the naked eye.

“Just by applying the latest infrared technologies and shooting at very high detail, lots of resolution, we are already opening up new characters from the scrolls that are either extremely indistinct or you just couldn’t see them before,” said Simon Tanner, director of King’s Digital Consultancy Services, according to CNN.

Tanner is on the team in charge of the digital project, which includes Greg Bearman – a retired scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Bearman pioneered archaeological digital imaging.

“To switch over to digital is really the way to go, and people were resistant to it initially, because it was a new way of doing stuff,” Bearman said. “They want their light table and their magnifying glass.”

But with digital imaging, he said, “You can see where the ink has broken away and you can see the texture of the animal skin, so you can see more detail than you can see with the naked eye.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest written record of the Bible’s Old Testament found to date, and include texts that reveal the life of early Christians in the Holy land.

Some were initially discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd in a cave in the Judean Desert while searching for a lost sheep or goat. The scrolls were found wrapped in linen inside earthenware jars. More scrolls were then found in 11 caves.

“They show the connection between Christianity, Judaism and how everything evolved from the God – the God is one God,” said Shor, head of treatment and conservation at the Antiquities Authority. “The scrolls are meant to bring us all together.”

The scrolls have only once been photographed in the 1950s, but some of the images have disintegrated, the Antiquity Authority informed.

In the past, people complained that only a handful of scholars could examine the scrolls.

Now, Shor says that the digitalised scrolls can be available in its entirety online to everyone.

“The Bible is sacred to us and to you and to all the monotheistic religions, and therefore [the scrolls] are national treasures and world treasures, and therefore it is our duty to preserve them at least for 2,000 years more,” she said.