The DEW line was one of three radar early warning systems of the time.
If you grew up in the middle of the Cold War, you probably remember hearing about the Distant Early Warning line between duck-and-cover drills. The United States and Canada built the DEW line radar stations throughout the Arctic to detect potential attacks from the other side of the globe.

MIT’s Lincoln Lab proposed the DEW Line in 1952, and the plan was ambitious. In order to spot bombers crossing over the Arctic circle in time, it required radar twice as powerful as the best radar of the day. It also needed communications systems that were 99 percent reliable, even in the face of terrestrial and solar weather.

In the end, there were 33 stations built from Alaska to Greenland in an astonishing 32 months. Keep in mind that these stations were located in a very inhospitable environment, where temperatures reached down to -60 °F (-51 °C). Operators kept the stations running 24/7 for 36 years, from 1957 to 1993.

System of Systems

The DEW line wasn’t the only radar early-warning system that the US and Canada had in place, only the most ambitious. The Pinetree Line was first activated in 1951. However, its simple radar was prone to jamming and couldn’t pick up things close to the ground. It was also too close to main cities along the border to offer them much protection. Even so, the 33 major stations, along with six smaller stations, did better than expected.

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Mid-Canada

A Mid-Canada Line site with White Alice antennas. The bistatic radar antennas look more like conventional antennas. (public domain)
The Mid-Canada Line utilized bistatic radar, where the transmitter and receiver were located in different positions. The idea is that the receiver hears the transmitter along with Doppler-shifted returns from a target. That means the total travel distance of the radar beam is almost constant.

This scheme is good for inexpensively covering a wide area, but it suffers at providing exact positions. It also has trouble rejecting things like birds near either the transmitter or the receiver.

Mid-Canada first started operating in 1956, but was shut down by 1965. The reason? Speed.

The Need for Speed

In the 1940s, when Pinetree was being planned, jet aircraft were relatively new. But they made great strides, and the faster a bomber might be, the more warning you needed. While Mid-Canada was closer to the possible path of an attack, it was clear by the time it was operational that the real threat would be from ballistic missiles. Planning for the DEW Line was already underway, but it focused on fast bombers.

Moving further north was the solution. If Pinetree was relatively easy to build, building the Mid-Canada Line was more challenging due to the terrain and weather conditions. Correct topographical information was difficult to find, and paradoxically, construction had to take place during the winter when the marshland was frozen, facilitating access to many of the sites.

The DEW Line, though, was above the Arctic Circle. Building there, near the 69th parallel, would present an even bigger challenge. Working conditions were passable during the short Arctic summer, but more difficult in the harsh winter, which included a solid month of nighttime.

Prototype

The prototype station was at a weather station in Alaska’s Barter Island. There was little data on building at such high latitudes, save for the recent work done to build the Thule Air Force Base. The prototype design needed some rework in 1953, but once things were moving, the DEW Line installations managed to run for 36 years.
DEW Line station in Alaska (public domain)
The typical station used prefabricated modules connected into “trains.” The modules were used as quarters, offices, equipment rooms, storage, and kitchens. Living quarters were 8′ x 12′ (2.4 m x 3.6 m). The bases were totally self-contained.

There were main stations that had a full crew and amenities like a library and other entertainment. Secondary stations typically had a chief, a cook, and a mechanic. The “gap filler” stations didn’t have any crew, but were serviced from the other stations when possible.

A main station might have two trains connected by a bridge. Smaller stations might have a single train of 25 modules. There were also garages for vehicles, warehouses, hangars, and dormitories for up to 24 personnel not housed in the main structures. While most of the stations were similar in design, the two on the Greenland ice cap were more like offshore drilling rigs, built on columns buried 100 feet into the ice.

Technology

A typical DEW line station used a 1.25 GHz radar with an average output of 400 watts, although it was rated for a maximum of 160 kW. The radar could probe from 3,000 feet out to 180 miles (300 km). Here are some details about the vacuum-tube-based technology in a 1980s booklet for newcomers to the line:

The radar system presently used was developed in the 1950’s and as such is a “tube” system which is experiencing reliability and maintainability problems. Good tubes are hard to find anymore. The operational performance is seriously affected, and support is becoming, so expensive, regardless of management improvements, that economic feasibility is only made possible by the absolute operational need for the system.

The Bell Companies played a crucial role in the development of the DEW Line. There’s an old AT&T archive video of the project that you can see below.

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White Alice

White Alice antennas at Barter Island, Alaska (public domain)
Because of the challenging radio conditions above the Arctic, the stations used a system known as White Alice to communicate. Short distances used microwave links. Giant tropospheric scatter antennas provided connections beyond the horizon at 900 MHz.

The system used two antennas for reliability and also transmitted on two frequencies. For shorter hops, a 60 ft (18 m) antennas would transmit 10 kW. Longer paths used 120 ft (36 m) antennas and 50 kW. Short links used 30 ft (9 m) dishes with 1 kW of power.

Museum

Check out the DEW Line virtual museum, which tells the story from construction to the debris left to be cleaned up. There’s also an extensive collection of related videos like the one embedded below.

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The DEW Line is just part of the tech history of the Cold War. Some of it was downright cloak-and-dagger.

hackaday.com/2025/07/16/the-de…

Nell’ambito delle indagini condotte dalla Procura della Repubblica di Roma e con il coordinamento della Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo, la Polizia Postale ha portato a termine importanti attività investigative nell’Operazione Eastwood nei confronti gruppo hacker filorusso noto come “NoName057(16)”, contemporaneamente ad analoghe attività in Germania, Stati Uniti, Olanda, Svizzera, Svezia, Francia e Spagna.

Il gruppo NONAME dal marzo del 2022 ad oggi, ha portato migliaia di attacchi verso siti governativi, della pubblica amministrazione, di infrastrutture di trasporto pubblico, istituti bancari, sanità e telecomunicazioni in diversi paesi europei.

Le indagini, coordinate a livello internazionale da Eurojust ed Europol hanno consentito di identificare numerosi aderenti al gruppo, disvelando chi si celava dietro ai server remoti, agli account Telegram e ai pagamenti in criptovaluta riconducibili alla crew hacker.

Cinque mandati di arresto internazionali sono stati altresì emessi nei confronti di altrettanti soggetti di nazionalità russa, 2 dei quali ritenuti vertici dell’organizzazione. Più di 600 server in vari Paesi sono stati disattivati ed in parte sottoposti a sequestro, in quanto server costituenti l’infrastruttura criminale da cui partivano gli attacchi.

NONAME reclutava simpatizzanti, distribuendo gli elenchi dei target occidentali da colpire e rivendicando poi gli attacchi attraverso ipropri canali anonimi Telegram. Con il canale DDosia Project, NONAME metteva a disposizione un software per entrare e operare nel gruppo.

L’infrastruttura criminale è risultata articolata su un livello centrale di comando e controllo nella Federazione russa, server intermedi dedicati alla anonimizzazione del segnale e alla dispersione delle tracce e, quindi in migliaia di computer messi a disposizione di NONAME dagli aderenti per gli attacchi.

NONAME ha coordinato gli attacchi dal territorio russo, remunerando in criptovalute gli aderenti. Gli attacchi “DDOS” (Distributed Denial of Service), con ingenti quantità di connessioni simultanee dai computer verso i siti da colpire, sono stati mirati a provocarne il collasso e la temporanea inservibilità, con ripercussioni anche rilevanti sull’erogazione dei servizi pubblici.

In Italia, le indagini delCNAIPIC, con i Centri operativi della Polizia Postale di Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto, Friuli-VG, Emilia-Romagna e Calabria, hanno condotto alla identificazione di 5 soggetti, ritenuti aderenti al gruppo avendo effettuato attacchi ad infrastrutture nazionali ed europee.

Nei confronti degli stessi la Procura della Repubblica di Roma ha emesso decreti di perquisizione eseguiti dai medesimi uffici. Sono inoltre al vaglio altre posizioni. Si sottolinea che le persone sottoposte ad indagine nei cui confronti si procede, debbono ritenersi innocenti fino a quando la loro colpevolezza non sia stata legalmente accertata con una sentenza definitiva.

Risultati complessivi dell’operazione Eastwood

• 2 arresti (1 arresto preliminare in Francia e 1 in Spagna)
• 7 mandati di arresto emessi (6 dalla Germania e 1 dalla Spagna)
• 24 perquisizioni domiciliari (2 in Repubblica Ceca, 1 in Francia, 3 in Germania, 5 in Italia, 12 in Spagna, 1 in Polonia)
• 13 persone intervistate (2 in Germania, 1 in Francia, 4 in Italia, 1 in Polonia, 5 in Spagna)
• Oltre 1.000 sostenitori, di cui 15 amministratori, sono stati avvisati della loro responsabilità legale tramite un’app di messaggistica
• Oltre 100 server interrotti in tutto il mondo
• La maggior parte dell’infrastruttura principale di NoName057(16) è stata messa offline

Paesi partecipanti

• Repubblica Ceca – Agenzia nazionale antiterrorismo, estremismo e criminalità informatica
• Finlandia – Ufficio nazionale investigativo (NBI)
• Francia – Unità nazionale di sicurezza informatica della Gendarmeria nazionale, Procura della Repubblica di Parigi – Giurisdizione nazionale contro la criminalità organizzata (JUNALCO)
• Germania – Ufficio federale di polizia criminale (Bundeskriminalamt), Procura generale di Francoforte sul Meno – Centro per la criminalità informatica
• Italia – Polizia di Stato (Polizia di Stato)
• Lituania – Polizia nazionale
• Paesi Bassi – Polizia nazionale (Politie), Procura della Repubblica
• Polonia – Ufficio centrale per la criminalità informatica
• Spagna – Guardia Civil, Polizia Nazionale (Policía Nacional)
• Svezia – Polisen
• Svizzera – Ufficio federale di polizia fedpol e Ministero pubblico della Confederazione (MPC)
• Stati Uniti – Federal Bureau of Investigation

Paesi di supporto

• Belgio
• Canada
• Danimarca
• Estonia
• Lettonia
• Romania
• Ucraina

Agenzie UE partecipanti

• Europol
• Eurojust
• ENISA

L'articolo Operazione Eastwood: Smantellato il gruppo hacker filorusso NoName057(16) proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

For decades there has been this tantalizing idea being pitched of pulling CO₂ out of the air and using the carbon molecules for something more useful, like making plastics. Although this is a fairly simple process, it is also remarkably inefficient. Recently Caltech researchers have managed to boost the efficiency somewhat with a new two-stage process involving electrocatalysis and thermocatalysis that gets a CO₂ utilization of 14%, albeit with pure CO₂ as input.
The experimental setup with the gas diffusion electrode (GDE) and the copolymerization steps. (Credit: Caltech)
The full paper as published in Angewandte Chemie International is sadly paywalled with no preprint available, but we can look at the Supplemental Information for some details. We can see for example the actual gas diffusion cell (GDE) starting on page 107 in which the copper and silver electrodes react with CO₂ in a potassium bicarbonate (KHCO₃) aqueous electrolyte, which produces carbon monoxide (CO) and ethylene (C₂H₄). These then react under influence of a palladium catalyst in the second step to form polyketones, which is already the typical way that these thermoplastics are created on an industrial scale.

The novelty here appears to be that the ethylene and CO are generated in the GDEs, which require only the input of CO₂ and the potassium bicarbonate, with the CO2 recirculated for about an hour to build up high enough concentrations of CO and C₂H₄. Even so, the researchers note a disappointing final quality of the produced polyketones.

Considering that a big commercial outfit like Novomer that attempted something similar just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it seems right to be skeptical about producing plastics on an industrial scale, before even considering using atmospheric CO₂ for this at less than 450 ppm.

hackaday.com/2025/07/16/caltec…

Cloudflare ha registrato un netto calo degli attacchi DDoS nel secondo trimestre del 2025, bloccandone 7,3 milioni, rispetto ai 20,5 milioni segnalati nel primo trimestre. Nonostante il calo complessivo degli attacchi, la quota di incidenti estremi è aumentata significativamente.

Nel secondo trimestre, Cloudflare ha registrato una media di 71 attacchi ipervolumetrici al giorno, portando il totale a oltre 6.500. Questi attacchi, caratterizzati da un’intensità estrema, sono diventati particolarmente evidenti nel contesto del calo generale. Un incidente di questo tipo ha raggiunto il picco di 7,3 terabit al secondo e 4,8 miliardi di pacchetti al secondo in meno di un minuto. Questi picchi di traffico sono accompagnati non solo da attacchi di forza bruta, ma anche da tecniche più subdole, come la scansione delle vulnerabilità in background, che consente agli aggressori di aggirare le difese standard.

Il numero di attacchi L3/L4 è diminuito dell’81% rispetto al primo trimestre, attestandosi a 3,2 milioni, mentre gli attacchi HTTP sono aumentati del 9%, raggiungendo quota 4,1 milioni. Oltre il 70% degli attacchi HTTP proveniva da botnet note. I metodi più frequentemente utilizzati si basavano sul sovraccarico tramite protocolli DNS, TCP SYN e UDP.

I criminali informatici hanno preso di mira più spesso le aziende di telecomunicazioni e i fornitori di servizi, seguiti dai settori di Internet, dei servizi IT e del gioco d’azzardo. Le regioni più colpite sono state Cina, Brasile, Germania, India, Corea del Sud, Turchia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Russia e Azerbaigian. La maggior parte degli attacchi ha avuto origine da Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina e Ucraina.

Di particolare rilievo è l’aumento degli attacchi che superano la soglia dei 100 milioni di pacchetti al secondo, con un aumento del 592% rispetto al trimestre precedente. Anche gli attacchi ransomware sono aumentati del 68%. In questi casi, gli aggressori minacciano di lanciare un attacco DDoS o ne stanno già eseguendo uno, chiedendo poi un compenso per fermarlo.

Cloudflare sottolinea che gli attacchi di grandi dimensioni stanno diventando sempre più frequenti. Su 100 attacchi HTTP, sei superano un milione di richieste al secondo e su 10.000 attacchi L3/L4, cinque superano 1 terabit al secondo, con un aumento del 1.150% in un trimestre.

L’azienda ha anche segnalato l’attività della botnet DemonBot , che prende di mira i sistemi Linux, principalmente i dispositivi IoT vulnerabili. Il malware sfrutta porte aperte e password deboli per ingaggiare i dispositivi in attacchi DDoS su larga scala a livello UDP, TCP e applicazione. DemonBot è controllato tramite server di comando e controllo ed è in grado di generare enormi quantità di traffico, attaccando servizi di gaming, hosting e aziendali.

La diffusione di tali minacce è associata a problemi tipici: scarsa sicurezza dei dispositivi IoT, porte SSH aperte e software obsoleto. Tali vulnerabilità, in combinazione con tecniche come attacchi TCP riflessi, amplificazione DNS e burst di traffico ingannevoli, vengono sempre più analizzate nei report di Cloudflare sulla sicurezza delle minacce e delle API.

L'articolo Cloudflare: Calo degli attacchi DDoS nel secondo trimestre del 2025, ma aumentano quelli estremi proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

For home HVAC systems, heat pumps seem to be the way of the future. When compared to electric heating they can be three to four times more efficient, and they don’t directly burn fossil fuels. They also have a leg up over standard air conditioning systems since they can provide both cooling and heating, and they can even be used on water heating systems. Their versatility seems unmatched, but it does come at a slight cost of complexity as [Janne] learned while trying to bring one back to life.

The heat pump here is a Samsung with some physical damage, as well as missing the indoor half of the system. Once the damage to the unit was repaired and refilled with refrigerant, [Janne] used an Optidrive E3 inverter controlled by an Arduino Mega to get the system functional since the original setup wouldn’t run the compressor without the indoor unit attached. The Arduino manages everything else on the system as well including all of the temperature sensors and fan motor control.

With everything up and running [Janne] connected the system to a swimming pool, which was able to heat the pool in about three hours using 60 kWh of energy. The system is surprisingly efficient especially compared to more traditional means of heating water, and repairing an old or damaged unit rather than buying a new one likely saves a significant amount of money as well. Heat pump projects are getting more common around here as well, and if you have one in your home take a look at this project which adds better climate control capabilities. to a wall mount unit.

hackaday.com/2025/07/16/arduin…

Nine civil society organisations, including EDRi, submitted a complaint against X for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) by using people’s sensitive personal data for targeted ads. Together, we are calling for Digital Services Coordinators and the European Commission to promptly investigate X, and hold it to accountable for undermining users’ fundamental rights.

The post Civil society files joint DSA complaint against X for targeting people with ads using their sensitive personal data appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).