Dear Colleague Letter: Research Coordination Network for the National Discovery Cloud for Climate (RCN-NDCC)

Published: 6 September 2024
Categories: NSF Pgm Announcements

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

NSF 24-126

September 06, 2024

Dear Colleagues:

With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the U. S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announces its interest in receiving Research Coordination Network (RCN) proposals to establish a coordinating organization for the National Discovery Cloud for Climate initiative. NSF expects to make one award for up to five years and $500,000/year, subject to the availability of funds and quality of proposals.

Overview: National Discovery Cloud for Climate

The National Discovery Cloud for Climate (NDC-C) is an NSF initiative that will cooperatively advance cyberinfrastructure and climate research through awards that support collaborations between computer scientists, cyberinfrastructure developers and operators, and climate researchers from the geosciences, biosciences, engineering, and other disciplines. NDC-C promotes these collaborations through co-funding of proposals submitted to

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Dear Colleague Letter: NSF and the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) Lead Agency Opportunity in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Published: 6 September 2024
Categories: NSF Pgm Announcements

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

NSF 24-125

September 6, 2024

Dear Colleagues:

The Mathematical & Physical Sciences Directorate (MPS) of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) are in a partnership to support international collaboration under the NSF-UEFISCDI Lead Agency Opportunity in Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The goal of this activity is to promote collaborative research within the mathematical sciences by reducing barriers to conducting research with international collaborators. The NSF-UEFISCDI Lead Agency Opportunity allows U.S. and Romanian researchers to submit a single collaborative proposal that will undergo a single merit review process through NSF as the lead agency.

This document provides guidelines for the preparation, submission, review and award of NSF-UEFISCDI Collaborative Proposals.

Under the NSF-UEFISCDI Lead Agency Opportunity, proposals may be accepted for

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Integrating security from code to cloud

Published: 5 September 2024
Categories: MIT Tech Review

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

The Human Genome Project, SpaceX’s rocket technology, and Tesla’s Autopilot system may seem worlds apart in form and function, but they all share a common characteristic: the use of open-source software (OSS) to drive innovation.

Offering publicly accessible code that can be viewed, modified, and distributed freely, OSS expedites developer productivity and creates a collaborative space for groundbreaking advancements.

“Open source is critical,” says David Harmon, director of software engineering for AMD. “It provides an environment of collaboration and technical advancements. Savvy users can look at the code themselves; they can evaluate it; they can review it and know that the code that they’re getting is legit and functional for what they’re trying to do.”

But OSS can also compromise an organization’s security posture by introducing hidden vulnerabilities that fall under the radar of busy IT teams, especially as cyberattacks targeting open source

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Russian Military Cyber Actors Target US and Global Critical Infrastructure

Published: 4 September 2024
Categories: US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team

RSS feed source: National Science Foundation

Summary

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and National Security Agency (NSA) assess that cyber actors affiliated with the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155) are responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020. GRU Unit 29155 cyber actors began deploying the destructive WhisperGate malware against multiple Ukrainian victim organizations as early as January 13, 2022. These cyber actors are separate from other known and more established GRU-affiliated cyber groups, such as Unit 26165 and Unit 74455.

To mitigate this malicious cyber activity, organizations should take the following actions today:

Prioritize routine system updates and remediate known exploited vulnerabilities. Segment networks to prevent the spread of malicious activity. Enable phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA) for all externally facing account services, especially for webmail, virtual private networks (VPNs), and accounts that access critical systems.

This Cybersecurity Advisory provides tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) associated with Unit 29155 cyber actors—both during and succeeding their deployment of WhisperGate against Ukraine—as well as further analysis (see Appendix A) of the WhisperGate malware initially published in the joint advisory, Destructive Malware Targeting Organizations in Ukraine, published February 26, 2022.

FBI, CISA, NSA and the following partners are releasing this joint advisory as

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