STE WILLIAMS

Akamai To Acquire Prolexic

CAMBRIDGE, MA and HOLLYWOOD, FL – December 2, 2013 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) and Prolexic Technologies, Inc. announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Prolexic, a provider of cloud-based security solutions for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Faced with an ever-changing threat landscape, organizations require comprehensive security solutions that address many different protection scenarios. These include securing mission‑critical Web properties and applications from attack, as well as protecting the full suite of enterprise IP applications – including email, file transfers, and VPN – across a data center.

Akamai provides leading solutions for defending Web sites and Web applications by leveraging the scale and intelligence of its global platform to protect against even the largest and most sophisticated DDoS and application-layer attacks. Prolexic combines DDoS mitigation solutions with security operations expertise for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications.

By acquiring Prolexic, Akamai intends to provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions designed to defend an enterprise’s Web and IP infrastructure against application-layer, network-layer and data center attacks delivered via the Internet.

“Any company doing business on the Internet faces an evolving threat landscape of attacks aimed at disrupting operations, defacing the brand, or attempting to steal sensitive data and information,” said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai. “By joining forces with Prolexic, we intend to combine Akamai’s leading security and performance platform with Prolexic’s highly-regarded DDoS mitigation solutions for data center and enterprise applications protection. We believe that Prolexic’s solutions and team will help us achieve our goal of making the Internet fast, reliable, and secure.”

“Today, business is defined by the availability, security and latency of Internet-facing applications, data and infrastructure,” said Scott Hammack, CEO at Prolexic. “Being able to rely on one provider for Internet performance and security greatly simplifies resolution of network availability issues and offers clients clear lines of accountability. We believe that, together, we will be able to deliver an unprecedented level of network visibility and protection.”

Under terms of the agreement, Akamai will acquire all of the outstanding equity of Prolexic in exchange for a net cash payment of approximately $370 million, after expected purchase price adjustments, plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Prolexic stock. The closing of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to occur in the first half of 2014. Therefore, Akamai’s Q4 2013 existing guidance remains unchanged. The Prolexic acquisition is expected to be slightly dilutive to Akamai’s Non-GAAP net income per share in the first full year post closure in the range of $0.06 to $0.08. Once the acquisition closes, the Company will include Prolexic in its guidance going forward.

Conference call scheduled today, Monday, December 2 at 8:45 a.m. ET

Akamai will host a conference call to discuss the acquisition of Prolexic today, December 2, 2013, at 8:45 a.m. Eastern time. The call may include forward-looking financial guidance from management. The call can be accessed through 1-800-706-7749 (or 1-617-614-3474 for international calls) using conference ID No. 19279933. A live Webcast of the call may be accessed at www.akamai.com in the Investor section. In addition, a replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the conference through the Akamai Website or by calling 1-888-286-8010 (or 1-617-801-6888 for international calls) and using conference ID No. 55460617.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In addition to providing financial measurements based on generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (GAAP), Akamai provides additional financial metrics that are not prepared in accordance with GAAP (non-GAAP). Management uses non-GAAP financial measures, in addition to GAAP financial measures, to understand and compare operating results across accounting periods, for financial and operational decision making, for planning and forecasting purposes and to evaluate Akamai’s financial performance. The non-GAAP financial measures included in this press release are Adjusted EBITDA margin and non-GAAP net income per share.

Management believes that the use of non-GAAP financial measures allows for meaningful comparisons and analysis of trends in the business, as they exclude expenses and gains that may be infrequent, unusual in nature and not reflective of Akamai’s ongoing operating results. Management also believes that non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information to investors in understanding and evaluating Akamai’s operating results and future prospects in the same manner as used by management and in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies.

The non-GAAP financial measures do not replace the presentation of Akamai’s GAAP financial results and should only be used as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, Akamai’s financial results presented in accordance with GAAP. Akamai has not provided a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure used in this press release to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure because it is not practicable to do so at this time.

Akamai’s definitions of the non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release are outlined below:

• Non-GAAP net income – GAAP net income adjusted for the following tax-effected items: amortization of acquired intangible assets; stock-based compensation; amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation; restructuring charges; acquisition related costs; certain gains and losses on investments; gains and other activity related to divestiture of a business; loss on early extinguishment of debt; gains and losses on legal settlements and other non-recurring or unusual items that may arise from time to time.

• Non-GAAP net income per share – Non-GAAP net income divided by the basic weighted average or diluted common shares outstanding used in GAAP net income per share calculations.

• Adjusted EBITDA – GAAP net income excluding the following items: interest; income taxes; depreciation and amortization of tangible and intangible assets; stock-based compensation; amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation; restructuring charges; acquisition related costs; certain gains and losses on investments; gains, losses and other activity related to divestiture of a business; foreign exchange gains and losses; loss on early extinguishment of debt; gains and losses on legal settlements and other non-recurring or unusual items that may arise from time to time.

• Adjusted EBITDA margin – Adjusted EBITDA stated as a percentage of revenue.

The non-GAAP adjustments, and Akamai’s basis for excluding them from non-GAAP financial measures, are outlined below:

• Amortization of acquired intangible assets – Akamai has incurred amortization of intangible assets, included in its GAAP financial statements, related to various acquisitions the Company has made. The amount of an acquisition’s purchase price allocated to intangible assets and term of its related amortization can vary significantly and are unique to each acquisition. Therefore, Akamai excludes amortization of acquired intangible assets to provide investors with a consistent basis for comparing pre- and post-acquisition operating results.

• Stock-based compensation and amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation – Although stock-based compensation is an important aspect of the compensation to Akamai’s employees and executives, the expense varies with changes in the stock price and market conditions at the time of grant, varying valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types. This makes the comparison of Akamai’s current financial results to previous and future periods difficult to interpret. Therefore, Akamai believes it is useful to exclude stock-based compensation and amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation in order to better understand the performance of Akamai’s core business performance and to be consistent with the way the investors evaluate its performance and comparison of its operating results to peer companies.

• Restructuring charges – Akamai has incurred restructuring charges, included in its GAAP financial statements, primarily due to workforce reductions and estimated costs of exiting facility lease commitments. Akamai excludes these items when evaluating its continuing business performance as such items are not consistently recurring, do not reflect expected future operating expense, nor provide meaningful insight into the current and past operations of its business.

• Acquisition related costs – Acquisition related costs include transaction fees, due diligence costs and other one-time direct costs associated with strategic activities. In addition, subsequent adjustments to the Company’s initial estimated amount of contingent consideration associated with specific acquisitions are included within acquisition related costs. These amounts are impacted by the timing and size of the acquisitions. Akamai excludes acquisition related costs and benefits to provide a useful comparison of the Company’s operating results to prior periods and to its peer companies because such amounts vary significantly based on magnitude of its acquisition transactions.

• Gain and other activity related to divestiture of a business – Akamai recognized a gain and other activity associated with the divestiture of its Advertising Decision Solutions business. Akamai excludes gains and other activity related to divestiture of a business because sales of this nature occur infrequently and are not considered part of the Company’s core business operations.

• Income tax-effect of non-GAAP adjustments – The non-GAAP adjustments described above are reported on a pre-tax basis. The income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments is the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP income tax expense. Non-GAAP income tax expense is computed on non-GAAP pre-tax income (GAAP pre-tax income adjusted for non-GAAP adjustments) and excludes certain discrete tax items (such as recording or release of valuation allowances), if any. Akamai believes that applying the non-GAAP adjustments and their related income tax effect allows the Company to more properly reflect the income attributable to its core operations.

About Prolexic

Prolexic is one of the largest, most trusted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation providers in the world. Designed to absorb large and complex attacks, Prolexic aims to restore mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global enterprises and government agencies within minutes. Some of the world’s largest banks and the leading companies in e-Commerce, SaaS, payment processing, travel/hospitality, gaming, energy and other at-risk industries rely on Prolexic to protect their businesses. Founded in 2003 as a leading cloud DDoS mitigation platform, Prolexic is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida, and has scrubbing centers located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. To learn more about Prolexic, please visit www.prolexic.com and @Prolexic on Twitter.

About Akamai

Akamai is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the Company’s solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platformtrade providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/management/akamai-to-acquire-prolexic/240164358

Vodafone Iceland Björked after Turkish hacker pinches passwords

Email delivery: 4 steps to get more email to the inbox

Vodafone Iceland has been hacked and 77,000 customer records spaffed across the internet.

The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service ruv.is reports that the hack became apparent on Saturday. By Sunday Vodafone Iceland had ‘fessed up to the incident but denied other reports that personal details including bank account numbers and passwords had been revealed to the world.


The good news, if there is any, is that the dump comes from 2011. The bad news is that some of the data includes correspondence between Icelandic politicians, some of it containing less-than-respectful mentions of the nation’s prime minister.

Vodafone Iceland has suggested subscribers change their passwords, pronto, and do the same for any social media or other accounts that shared passwords with their Vodafone accounts, before the Turkish hackers reportedly behind the exploit get up to further naughtiness.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this hack is its scale in the context of Iceland’s population. The nation is home to about 320,000 people. Even if we assume some of the compromised accounts are businesses, not individuals, 77,000 accounts means a very high proportion of the Icelandic population is at risk of p0wnage. Perhaps the problem is wider: the various entities that use Vodafone’s name and brand have been known to share technology. ®

Disaster recovery protection level self-assessment

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/vodafone_iceland_hacked/

That toolbar you downloaded is malware? Tough, read the EULA

Email delivery: 4 steps to get more email to the inbox

Security software vendor Malwarebytes has highlighted what it says is an increasing trend for malware authors to embed Bitcoin mining into things like browser toolbar helpers and search agents. That’s not so new, but its latest observation is that the malware-peddlers are trying to tie up suckers with their license agreements.

According to this post, the miner in question is jhProtominer, and it’s being installed by a crowd called We Build Toolbars (WBT).


WBT uses a custom installer, Monitor.exe, which it serves up from Amazon, to start up the Bitcoin miner on the user’s system – and for people who have been dim enough to install its browser helpers, the sting in the tail is in the EULA:

“As part of downloading a Mutual Public, [the name it uses for the installer – The Register] your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates.”

It’s not only browser helpers that use Monitor.exe and therefore carry the miner and the EULA terms. Malwarebytes also identified Your Free Proxy – a proxy that makes the usual claims about privacy and security – as lumbering users with the unwanted Bitcoin miner, which pinches CPU time and bandwidth. ®

Disaster recovery protection level self-assessment

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/01/dont_like_our_malware_tough_read_the_eula/

Nexus phones carry SMS crash bug vuln

Email delivery: 4 steps to get more email to the inbox

A Dutch security researcher has published a vulnerability that allows someone to crash a remote Nexus 4 or Nexus 5 phone – by sending them a crafted “Class 0” text message.

Instead of falling into a user’s inbox and waiting for someone to read the message, a Class 0 or “flash message” pops up immediately as a message window that the user is supposed to decide whether or not to save.


On the Nexus phones, according to Levi9’s Bogdan Alecu, the flash message is displayed above all active windows, with a semi-transparent overlay dimming them.

The bug that turns this into a vulnerability is this: Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 don’t give audio notifications of incoming flash messages. So an attacker can pile message upon message on a victim until the phone begins to misbehave.

In this presentation to DefCamp 2013, Alecu identified various impacts of an attack in which more than 30 messages are sent to a target: either the messaging application crashes, or the phone reboots, or Internet access collapses.

If the victim’s phone has SIM PIN-protection enabled, the phone will stop responding to the network.

Class Zero Attack

Alecu complains that Google has known of the flax for more than a year with no fix announced. In the absence of an official fix, he points to this app, which is designed to act as a firewall against Class 0 messages. ®

Disaster recovery protection level self-assessment

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/nexus_phones_carry_sms_crash_bug_vuln/

Drupal security update fixes a laundry list of problems, including "predictable random numbers"

The Debian Linux security team recently pushed out an wry security advisory for popular web content management system (CMS) Drupal.

As we’ve written before, CMSes and online forum software – applications that let you design, create, store, edit, backup, keep track of, and publish your website – are a popular target with cybercrooks.

After all, if a crook can get into your CMS, he can upload his own malicious downloads and booby-trapped web pages, and your server will helpfully store, organise and deliver his malware to an unsuspecting public.

You provide the brand, the reputation, the URLs and the bandwidth, and he doesn’t even have to figure out how to wrangle his dodgy content into your databases or directory structure – he can point-and-click just like you would, and the CMS will do the heavy lifting.

That lends a certain pertinence to the security summary in Debian Security Advisory DSA-2804-1, given the laundry list of fixes since the previous Drupal update back in August:

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Drupal, a fully-featured content management framework: Cross-site request forgery, insecure pseudo random number generation, code execution, incorrect security token validation and cross-site scripting.

Now THAT’s what we call a vulnerability list!

We were especially interested in the bug relating to “insecure pseudo random number generation,” since random numbers (or, more precisely, numbers that aren’t random) have been a recurring theme in recent months.

Even Linus Torvalds, the rudest man in Linuxdom, has let rip about randomness lately.

Cryptography needs good-quality random numbers, so we went looking to see what Drupal had been doing wrong and how it had fixed the problem.

Amongst other things, the old code used a PHP function called mt_rand() for generating random passwords.

The mt part stands for Mersenne Twister, a highly-regarded pseudorandom number generator for non-cryptographic purposes.

The Twister is very fast, reliably produces an unbiased stream of 32-bit integers that doesn’t repeat except on geological timescales, but it is designed for use in applications such as simulations and statistical analysis, not for cryptography.

The authors’ own website makes this abundantly clear:

In short, if you know the last few hundred random numbers produced by the Twister, you can precisely reconstruct the internal state of the generation engine – clone it, in other words – and thus work out everything that comes next.

Worse still, the Drupal code didn’t even bother to generate a decent-quality random starting seed for its Twister functions on startup, so you might even have been able to predict the initial state of the generator, and thus to predict all its outputs, not just those after you’d cloned the internal state of an already-running Twister.

Drupal’s new code uses a function that at least tries to use a cryptographic-quality random generator, drupal_random_bytes(), calling OpenSSL or reading from Unix’s /dev/urandom.

→ Under most Unix and Unix-like operating systems, /dev/urandom is a special file that can be opened and read in, just like a regular file such as a document or image. But the content is produced by a high-quality random generator running inside the kernel. Because any program that can read files can use /dev/urandom, there isn’t really any excuse for trying to invent your own source of randomness.

If you’re a Drupal user, get the update.

If you’re a Drupal coder, leave the cryptography to cryptographers.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/Fp_-30oc3vU/

Computer Security Day, Forward secrecy, XP 0-day and YouTube spam

Five Protocols That Should Be Closely Watched

For decades, opportunistic attackers have scanned the Internet for open ports through which they can compromise vulnerable applications.

Such scanning has only gotten easier: The Shodan search engine regularly scans the Internet and stores the results for anyone to search; researchers from the University of Michigan have refined techniques to allow for fast, comprehensive scans of a single port across the Internet; and programs, such as NMap, allow anyone to scan for open, and potentially vulnerable, ports.

While the most commonly attacked ports are those used by Secure Shell (SSH), the file transfer protocol (FTP), the remote desktop protocol (RDP), and Web servers (HTTP), companies need to monitor network activity aimed at less common protocols and ports, say security experts. Attackers will likely increasingly look for vulnerabilities in less common ports, says HD Moore, chief research officer for vulnerability-management firm Rapid7, which has made a name for itself scanning the Internet for just those ports.

“This stuff is not in the top bucket, in terms of priority, but it tends to bite people because they are not keeping an eye on it,” he says.

Companies should not just monitor for malicious activity using these protocols, but proactively take an inventory of the applications inside their own networks and connected to the Internet that expose firms to potential opportunistic attacks, says Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute. The SANS Institute’s DShield project collects data from contributors to analyze the ports in which attackers are most interested.

“Companies need not just to detect the attacks coming in, but to inventory all the devices that have in their network looking at traffic on these ports,” he says. “It sort of comes down to inventory control on the network.”

For companies looking for a place to start, Ullrich and Moore suggest five protocols where companies can check for weaknesses.

Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)
Over the past year, security researcher Dan Farmer has investigated weaknesses in the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol. Many companies use servers that can be monitored and managed through a baseboard management controller, an embedded device that communicates using IPMI. Farmer found that the IPMI standard and various implementations have a number of security flaws.

[‘Project Sonar’ community project launched for sharing Internet-scanning data, tools, and analysis. See Researchers Unite To #ScanAllTheThings.]

Rapid7 investigated SuperMicro’s specific implementation, finding that the company’s baseboard management controller used default passwords and was vulnerable to a number of universal plug-and-play issues.

“IPMI is used a lot by businesses and they don’t really understand what all the risks are,” Moore says. “It is really difficult to have an IPMI installation that is not vulnerable.”

Moore and other security experts recommend managing devices that use the IPMI protocol behind virtual private networks, firewalls and other security, always assuming the devices are in a hostile network.

Embedded Web servers
A variety of devices are vulnerable, not because of the native protocols that they use, but because of the lightweight Web servers embedded in the devices to provide a management interface. From printers and baseboard management controllers to routers and PBXes, companies host a wide array of devices that likely have vulnerable Web interfaces to manage the technology.

“These undocumented, undisclosed and unmonitored Web interfaces are a bigger deal than most people realize,” Moore said. “They are really common, but they are not something that people normally keep track of.”

Ullrich agrees, saying that DShield data shows that companies are seeing opportunistic scans for the devices.

“All the miscellaneous devices–routers, switches–sometimes have a management interface on an uncommon port, but you see a decent amount of scanning activity for these,” he says.

Video conferencing
Last year, Moore scanned the Internet for signs of video conferencing systems connected directly to the Internet and set to auto answer, estimating that some 150,000 devices were vulnerable to an attacker directly calling into the conferencing system.

“Most folks did not do any sort of security on the video conferencing side, and many of them had really horrible security on the Web management interface,” Moore says.

Companies should scan their public Internet space on port 1720, typically used by the H.323 messaging protocol, using a “status enquiry” to non-intrusively check for potential vulnerable systems, according to Rapid7.

SQL servers
Databases are frequent targets of attacks. Many attackers scan for open Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL ports, but rather than attempting to compromise such systems with exploits, they instead attempt to brute force the password protecting the databases, says the SANS Institute’s Ullrich.

“They typically don’t search for a vulnerability there, but for a weak password,” he says. “They scan for the databases and then try to connect by guessing passwords.”

Companies should track down any database accessible from the Internet and ensure that adequate steps are taken to secure access to the servers.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
The DShield project sees some scanning for the simple network management protocol (SNMP), but Ullrich sees the protocol as mainly an overlooked risk.

Moore, however, sees SNMP as an engine for future attacks. Because many companies do not pay attention to SNMP, the protocol could be used as a vector for compromise and as a method of amplification for distributed denial-of-service attacks, Moore says.

“SNMP tends to get short shrift in terms of security exposure, not to mention it can be used for amplification attacks,” Moore says. Amplification attacks typically use the DNS system, which can be made to respond to a single request with a multitude of packets. The SNMP protocol has similar characteristics, he says.

Companies should filter inbound malformed packets to prevent their systems from being used in a distributed denial-of-service attack and to block all outbound SNMP packets.

Have a comment on this story? Please click “Add Your Comment” below. If you’d like to contact Dark Reading’s editors directly, send us a message.

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/monitoring/five-protocols-that-should-be-closely-wa/240164357

Computer Security Day, Forward secrecy, XP 0-day and YouTube spam – 60 Sec Security [VIDEO]

Drupal security update fixes a laundry list of problems, including “predictable random numbers”

The Debian Linux security team recently pushed out an wry security advisory for popular web content management system (CMS) Drupal.

As we’ve written before, CMSes and online forum software – applications that let you design, create, store, edit, backup, keep track of, and publish your website – are a popular target with cybercrooks.

After all, if a crook can get into your CMS, he can upload his own malicious downloads and booby-trapped web pages, and your server will helpfully store, organise and deliver his malware to an unsuspecting public.

You provide the brand, the reputation, the URLs and the bandwidth, and he doesn’t even have to figure out how to wrangle his dodgy content into your databases or directory structure – he can point-and-click just like you would, and the CMS will do the heavy lifting.

That lends a certain pertinence to the security summary in Debian Security Advisory DSA-2804-1, given the laundry list of fixes since the previous Drupal update back in August:

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Drupal, a fully-featured content management framework: Cross-site request forgery, insecure pseudo random number generation, code execution, incorrect security token validation and cross-site scripting.

Now THAT’s what we call a vulnerability list!

We were especially interested in the bug relating to “insecure pseudo random number generation,” since random numbers (or, more precisely, numbers that aren’t random) have been a recurring theme in recent months.

Even Linus Torvalds, the rudest man in Linuxdom, has let rip about randomness lately.

Cryptography needs good-quality random numbers, so we went looking to see what Drupal had been doing wrong and how it had fixed the problem.

Amongst other things, the old code used a PHP function called mt_rand() for generating random passwords.

The mt part stands for Mersenne Twister, a highly-regarded pseudorandom number generator for non-cryptographic purposes.

The Twister is very fast, reliably produces an unbiased stream of 32-bit integers that doesn’t repeat except on geological timescales, but it is designed for use in applications such as simulations and statistical analysis, not for cryptography.

The authors’ own website makes this abundantly clear:

In short, if you know the last few hundred random numbers produced by the Twister, you can precisely reconstruct the internal state of the generation engine – clone it, in other words – and thus work out everything that comes next.

Worse still, the Drupal code didn’t even bother to generate a decent-quality random starting seed for its Twister functions on startup, so you might even have been able to predict the initial state of the generator, and thus to predict all its outputs, not just those after you’d cloned the internal state of an already-running Twister.

Drupal’s new code uses a function that at least tries to use a cryptographic-quality random generator, drupal_random_bytes(), calling OpenSSL or reading from Unix’s /dev/urandom.

→ Under most Unix and Unix-like operating systems, /dev/urandom is a special file that can be opened and read in, just like a regular file such as a document or image. But the content is produced by a high-quality random generator running inside the kernel. Because any program that can read files can use /dev/urandom, there isn’t really any excuse for trying to invent your own source of randomness.

If you’re a Drupal user, get the update.

If you’re a Drupal coder, leave the cryptography to cryptographers.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/RRfQhfLt69s/

Aussie boffins can detect orbiting SPACE JUNK using rock gods’ radiation

5 ways to reduce advertising network latency

Scientists in Western Australia think they’ve cracked a way to use FM radio emissions from a youth station to track man-made garbage in low-Earth orbit. The boffins have demonstrated the technique using the International Space Station as a target.

The newly built Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in remote Boolardy sheep station in Australia’s western outback region uses radio transmissions from nearby youth-orientated station Triple J to detect objects in space. It has picked up the station’s signals reflected off the ISS, but the team says the same reflections could be refined down to serve a more useful purpose.


“We have shown that we are able to detect approximately 10 pieces of space junk simultaneously. Over time this means we are in a position to monitor a significant fraction of the space junk that is in Earth orbits,” said Professor Steven Tingay, chief investigator in the Australian Research Council Center for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO).

“An early warning system has the potential to protect the billions of dollars’ worth of vital infrastructure orbiting the Earth but also prevent collisions that will result in even more space debris being generated, such as what happened in the case of the Iridium 33 satellite in 2009.”

Space debris is certainly a problem. Mankind has been littering Earth’s orbit for more than 50 years and the situation is getting worse. NASA has had to upgrade rocketry control systems on the ISS so that it can dodge debris in six hours, instead of over a day in the original designs, due to the number of close shaves.

That said, the MWA isn’t designed for this kind of work. The telescope is one of the first operation stages of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, a $2bn radio telescope that will be the largest array in the Southern Hemisphere when it comes online in 2024, if current building schedules permit.

The SKA consists of a concentrated one square-kilometer heart of dishes and dipole radio receptors, with refining receivers spread up to 3,000 kilometers further out. It will work faster and image galaxies farther out than any other Earth-bound radio telescope.

One of its key tasks is to look back into the very early stages of the universe’s development, about 350 to 800 million years aft the Big Bang. This period, known as the Epoch of Reionization, saw the very first stars and galaxies form, and the Aussie telescope may be able to provide vital clues about what fired up the universe as we know it. ®

The business case for a multi-tenant, cloud-based Recovery-as-a-Service solution

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/29/aussie_boffins_use_radiating_youth_rock_to_track_space_debris/