Paris-based Dark Space is taking on the dual problems of debris and conflict in orbit with their mobile platform designed to launch, attach to, and ultimately deorbit uncooperative objects in space.
team of space.”The three-year-old startup is developing Interceptor, a spacecraft that is essentially a rocket-powered boxing glove that can be launched on short order to gently punch a wayward object out of its orbit.
“All the space sector is organized to do planned, long missions … but orbital defense is more about unplanned, short missions,” Laheyne said.
In that sense, Interceptor “is more like an air defense missile,” he explained.
Dark Space was founded by Laheyne and CTO Guillaume Orvain, engineers who cut their teeth at multi-national missile developer MBDA.
The U.S. National Security Agency has confirmed that hackers exploiting flaws in Ivanti’s widely used enterprise VPN appliance have targeted organizations across the U.S. defense sector.
Confirmation that the NSA is tracking these cyberattacks comes days after Mandiant reported that suspected Chinese espionage hackers have made “mass attempts” to exploit multiple vulnerabilities impacting Ivanti Connect Secure, the popular remote access VPN software used by thousands of corporations and large organizations worldwide.
Mandiant said earlier this week that the China-backed hackers tracked as a threat group it calls UNC5325 had targeted organizations across a variety of industries.
This includes the U.S. defense industrial base sector, a worldwide network of thousands of private sector organizations that provide equipment and services to the U.S. military, Mandiant said, citing earlier findings from security firm Volexity.
Akamai said in an analysis published last week that hackers are launching approximately 250,000 exploitation attempts each day and have targeted more than 1,000 customers.
Last week, my colleague Aria Alamalhodaei wrote an exclusive on defense and space tech venture firm Countdown Capital’s plan to shut down.
But Countdown shutting down is likely more of an isolated event than a sign of what’s to come for micro funds this year.
That’s changed today, and it isn’t surprising given the sheer amount of capital it takes to get defense startups off the ground; the costs are incomparable to a category like SaaS.
This is also why Countdown’s fate doesn’t portend cloudy skies for micro funds in other categories.
So despite the category heating up, a $500,000 check can still net a firm meaningful ownership at the pre-seed stage, they said.
SimSpace, a startup that creates digital replicas of organizations’ tech and networking stacks for cybersecurity training, has raised $45 million in a funding round led by L2 Point Management.
And it’s expanding its private-sector customer roster, having shored up contracts with the U.S. Cyber Command, FBI and national cyber defense teams in unnamed U.S.-allied countries.
We’ve had to make hard decisions and to tough it out.”SimSpace’s origins lie in U.S. Cyber Command, where Hutchison designed and led a joint tactical cyber training exercise, Cyber Flag, drawing on the expertise of tech staffer Lee Rossey at MIT’s Lincoln Lab.
At the time, Rossey was working on creating cyber “training ranges” to simulate the IT production environments of companies and critical infrastructure.
“With SimSpace, because training occurs outside of a company’s network, it’s possible to ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at cyber teams without breaking something in an actual production environment and disrupting vital operations,” Hutchison said.
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