The US Air Force has a terrifying new weapon against the increasing threat of cyber attacks and at first glance it bears a striking resemblance to 'Skynet' from the Terminator films.
Called the Cyberspace Vulnerability Assessment/Hunter (CVA/H), this piece of software is designed to constantly scan the Air Force's command network looking for vulnerabilities and then patching them up.
Think of it as a ruthless stalker, searching out either gaps in the Air Force's network or possible intruders and then eradicating them.
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By providing "in-depth assessment of information system assets such as computers, infrastructure, applications, data, and cyberspace operations," the CVA/H is able to work entirely in the background.
Air Force Space Command describes CVA/H's mission parameters as being able to "characterise adversary activity then "engage" and defeat that activity, as directed."
This isn't the only weapon that the Air Force has at its disposal, the newly announced Cyberspace Defense Analysis Weapon is a massive piece of monitoring software which has been designed to analyse unprotected communications systems around the world and then check if they're sending or receiving sensitive information.
This U.S. military radio telescope is used to gather and correlate military satellite data.
Both of these 'weapons' are part of a major shift by the US Space Command to create a powerful new defensive shield for the US military's cyber systems against the increasing risk of cyber attacks from other nations.