You’d think the military’s email service mail.mil would be more secure than Gmail and other free alternatives, but that’s apparently not the case. A Motherboard investigation in 2015 revealed that while it does have systems in place to protect classified messages, it doesn’t even use STARTTLS — a 15-year-old encryption technology that prevents emails from being intercepted in transit. That exposes unclassified emails to surveillance and leaves them vulnerable as they make their way to recipients. Now, after getting a lot of flak over the lack of security, Pentagon says it will finally start encrypting soldiers’ emails… but not until July 2018. See, Gizmodo discovered that the military’s email service doesn’t use STARTTLS, because it would prevent the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) from screening each message for malware, phishing attempts and exploits. A letter from DISA, which oversees the military’s emails, says its detection methods developed using national level intelligence “would be rendered ineffective if STARTTLS were enabled.” To be able to implement the technology and make it a default feature, it would have to migrate to a “new email gateway infrastructure, ” and migration won’t be done until July next year. DISA has revealed its plans to migrate the military’s email service in a letter addressed to Senator Ron Wyden, who questioned the agency for not using a “basic, widely used, easily enabled cybersecurity technology.” Wyden said in a statement that the move is definitely a step in the right direction, but he’s also pretty unhappy that it’ll take DISA a year to migrate. “Protecting the communications of American servicemen and women should be a priority, ” he said, “so I hope the agency accelerates its timeline.” Source: Gizmodo , Motherboard
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US military will finally start encrypting soldiers’ emails
New submitter joshtops shares a report from Scientific American: As NASA makes plans to one day send humans to Mars, one of the key technical gaps the agency is working to fill is how to provide enough power on the Red Planet’s surface for fuel production, habitats and other equipment. One option: small nuclear fission reactors, which work by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power. NASA’s technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years, with the aim of demonstrating the system at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas. Testing is due to start in September and end in January 2018. The last time NASA tested a fission reactor was during the 1960s’ Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP, which developed two types of nuclear power systems. The first system — radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs — taps heat released from the natural decay of a radioactive element, such as plutonium. RTGs have powered dozens of space probes over the years, including the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. The second technology developed under SNAP was an atom-splitting fission reactor. SNAP-10A was the first — and so far, only — U.S. nuclear power plant to operate in space. Launched on April 3, 1965, SNAP-10A operated for 43 days, producing 500 watts of electrical power, before an unrelated equipment failure ended the demonstration. The spacecraft remains in Earth orbit. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: A confidential computer project designed to break military codes was accidentally made public by New York University engineers. An anonymous digital security researcher identified files related to the project while hunting for things on the internet that shouldn’t be, The Intercept reported. He used a program called Shodan, a search engine for internet-connected devices, to locate the project. It is the product of a joint initiative by NYU’s Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing, headed by the world-renowned Chudnovsky brothers, David and Gregory, the Department of Defense, and IBM. Information on an exposed backup drive described the supercomputer, called — WindsorGreen — as a system capable of cracking passwords. Read more of this story at Slashdot.