EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
20th December 2020
Three New Systems for Indian Armed Forces
Recently, the Union Minister of Defence has handed over three new systems built by the Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO) to the Indian Armed Forces.
Border Surveillance System (BOSS)
- It is an “all-weather” electronic surveillance system successfully designed and developed by Instruments Research & Development Establishment (IRDE), Dehradun.
- It facilitates monitoring and surveillance by automatically detecting the intrusions in harsh high-altitude sub-zero temperature areas with remote operation capability.
- It consists of Battle Field Surveillance Radar (BFSR) and EO payload mounted on a pan-tilt unit kept at the observation tower.
Indian Maritime Situational Awareness System (IMSAS)
- It is a state-of-the-art, fully indigenous, high performance intelligent software system that provide Global Maritime situational picture, marine planning tools and Analytical capabilities.
- The system provides Maritime Operational Picture from Naval HQ to each individual ship in sea to enable Naval Command and control (C2).
- The Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics (CAIR), Bengaluru and Indian Navy has jointly conceptualised and developed the product and with the BEL.
ASTRA Missile
- It is the indigenously developed first Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-to-Air Missile.
- It can be launched from Sukhoi-30, Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Mig-29 and Mig-29K.
- It has been developed by Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL) and production by Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) Hyderabad.
SolarWinds Hack
Recently, a new cyberattack called ‘SolarWinds Hack’ was discovered which in the United States, has emerged as one of the biggest ever targeted against the US government.
- It was first discovered by US cybersecurity company FireEye, and since then more developments continue to come to light each day.
- The sheer scale of the cyber-attack remains unknown, although the US Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, parts of the Pentagon are all believed to have been impacted.
SolarWinds Hack
- It is a highly sophisticated threat actor which is considered as a state-sponsored attack.
- The FireEye Company has said that attack was carried out by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities and the attacker primarily sought information related to certain government customers.
- The cyberattack, which was named Campaign UNC2452, was not limited to the company but had targeted various public and private organisations around the world.
Nature of SolarWinds Hack
- It is being called a ‘Supply Chain’ attack because instead of directly attacking the federal government or a private organization’s network, the hackers target a third-party vendor, which supplies software to them.
- According to FireEye, the hackers gained 'access to victims via trojanized updates to SolarWinds' Orion IT monitoring and management software”.
- Once installed, the malware gave a backdoor entry to the hackers to the systems and networks of SolarWinds’ customers.
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