The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is an emerging Web3 technology that is currently seeing widespread abuse by threat actors. Cisco Talos has observed multiple ongoing campaigns that leverage the IPFS network to host their malware payloads and phishing kit infrastructure while facilitating other attacks. IPFS is often used for legitimate purposes, which makes it more difficult for security teams to differentiate between benign and malicious IPFS activity in their networks.
This cybersecurity incident is a really elegant case study that illustrates core concepts central to how we analyze a socio-technical system here at OODA Loop – core concepts we will return to often in the next couple of months as we provide a final analysis of certain research thematics (misinformation, AI innovation, etc.) and findings from our 2022 research agenda.

DARPA Forward has been taking national security innovation on the road. Since August – and through December 2022 – six regional events were scheduled at leading research and development universities nationwide to connect Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency leaders with new communities of talent and partnerships.   The ultimate goal: to energize regional and national innovation ecosystems, fuel breakthroughs in national security, and help deliver the U.S. technological advantage. Attendees will have an opportunity to dive into diverse topics within and across multiple domains and disciplines, including air/space, ground, virtual, social, bio/medical, electromagnetic, materials/manufacturing, maritime, and computing/AI/cyber. As these will be hybrid conferences, DARPA invites you to join them in person for one event and virtually for as many as you’d like.

Upcoming DARPA Forward sessions include:

November 15-16 – College Station, TX at Texas A&M University
December 13-14 – San Diego, CA at the University of California, San Diego

Brian Michael Jenkins is a long term OODA Network member and friend to the community. He is a researcher, thinker and writer known for producing books which have broad impact on decision-makers in government and industry. Brian was a Green Beret who initiated one of the first terrorism research programs in the nation.  We will be reviewing one of his more recent books soon, he recently published “Plagues and Their Aftermath”, which takes a long historical look at epidemics and pandemics and extracts lessons for our post COVID world. 

Brian also recently published an essay we recommend to all our network members. The topic is so important in our view we have asked Brian to give us an overview at our 18 November member meeting. 

The topic is domestic political violence. 

This OODA Network Member update provides insights into the status of US Space Policy, Cyber Threats in Space and methods of mitigating risk.

In light of our recent recommendations regarding the CSET China AI Watchboard and the potential of public/private policy research collaborations within the policy research community in general, we found this recent successful public-private partnership in the space policy domain really interesting and worth a look: The Satellite Dashboard is a collaboration between the Secure World Foundation (SWF), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.