Interesting. Glad to see the military conducting exercises without GPS, now that Russia has shown its willingness to jam it. In war we must be prepared to go without this incredibly-useful resource.

The year’s first iteration of the USAF’s premier set of aerial war games, known commonly as Red Flag, is kicking off today at Nellis Air Force Base just outside of Las Vegas, but this exercise will be different than any in the past. Not only is it the largest of its kind in the exercise’s 42 year history, but the USAF is going to blackout GPS over the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range to challenge aircrews and their weaponry under realistic fighting conditions. The tactic will spill over throughout the region, with warnings being posted stating inconsistent GPS service could be experienced by aircrews flying throughout the western United States.

Source: USAF Is Jamming GPS In The Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise – The Drive

Bonus: Read more of the Navy’s rationale for blocking GPS.

Hackers hacking hackers. Reason #47,672 why I love the Dutch!

According to a report in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD)—the Netherlands’ domestic intelligence service—had hacked into the network of a building at a Russian university in Moscow some time in the summer of 2014. The building housed a group running a hacking campaign now known as “Cozy Bear,” one of the “threat groups” that would later target the Democratic National Committee.

Russia’s hack of State Department was “hand-to-hand” combatAIVD’s intrusion into the network gave them access to computers used by the group behind Cozy Bear and to the closed-circuit television cameras that watched over them, allowing them to literally witness everything that took place in the building near Red Square, according to the report. Access to the video cameras in a hallway outside the space where the Russian hacking team worked allowed the AIVD to get images of every person who entered the room and match them against known Russian intelligence agents and officials.

Based on the images, analysts at AIVD later determined that the group working in the room was operated by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). An information and technology sharing arrangement with the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies resulted in the determination that Cozy Bear’s efforts were at least in part being driven by the Russian Federation’s leadership—including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Source: Candid camera: Dutch hacked Russians hacking DNC, including security cameras | Ars Technica

This seems to cross the “don’t be evil” line, Google. Tracking people after the fact? Really?

When it comes to tracking the precise location of an Android user’s phone, Google appears to use every means available—including Bluetooth-based location information transmitted to the company when the user might think they have Bluetooth turned off entirely.

A Quartz investigation found that a user can turn Bluetooth off on their smartphone running Google’s Android software, and the phone will continue to use Bluetooth to collect location-related data and transmit that data to Google. It does this by sending Google, among other things, the unique identifier codes of Bluetooth broadcasting devices it encounters. Such devices, known as beacons, are often used in stores, museums, and other public places to help phones ascertain their locations within buildings. Alphabet-owned Google does the tracking in part so advertisers can target “more useful” digital ads to users, but Quartz discovered that the company taps into an array of signals that can yield an individual’s whereabouts even when the user thinks they’ve disabled such tracking.

Source: Google (GOOG) can still use Bluetooth to track your Android phone when Bluetooth is turned off — Quartz