Concord Preview – Concord Feels Like Destiny Meets Overwatch – Game Informer

Last month, PlayStation released the first big look at Concord, its upcoming 5v5 multiplayer hero shooter from Firewalk Studios, a team it acquired last year. Though the recent cinematic footage teases something like a single-player, narrative-driven heist game akin to a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, the gameplay reveal that followed showcased the strictly multiplayer experience in a new light. Admittedly, this reveal left me feeling blasé; it looked fine, but not necessarily something I hadn’t seen before. However, after playing the game for a few hours during a recent preview event, I’m excited for more of the action. It feels like a mix of Destiny and Overwatch, but I am wary of the team’s emphasis on lore and storytelling and if it will pay off in a multiplayer-only format. 

Before going hands-on with Concord, Firewalk director of IP Kimberly Kreines and lead gameplay designer Claude Jerome walk me and my peers through a presentation to highlight the game’s sci-fi world. Kreines explains Firewalk set out to make something “unlike anything out there today”: a multiplayer experience that feels tactile and visceral, “like taking an action game and bashing it with a shooter,” and characters that feel real. She explains that players control various Freegunners in Concord, together in an outlaw crew of mercenaries taking jobs that play out in the game’s multiplayer matches. The government of this universe, the Guild, controls the freedom of the stars, but recently, a crew stole a Galactic Guide and our crew gains access to it, giving them (and you) access to this special map. 

Concord Preview – Concord Feels Like Destiny Meets Overwatch – Game Informer

I’m impressed by my first viewing of this map – it’s sprawling, colorful, bright, and chock-full of locations, planets, points of interest, and more. But I later learn it’s not something to interact with in the way you might in a single-player RPG (like I had hoped). It’s essentially a massive library of lore, with each point of interset an entry to learn more about Concord. It’s a neat feature, and while I’m a sucker for lore, it’s one I can see a lot of players ignoring. The same goes for Concord’s initial vignette, which players will watch when they first boot the game up. It’s beautifully rendered, with excellent voice acting to match, and it’s a short and fun burst of personality that gives some insight into the game’s various characters. And though Firewalk promises a new one each week, I struggle to see a future where players tune in for a new one, anticipating what’s next, at least in the game’s early beginnings. When I ask if these vignettes will tell a wider narrative, perhaps across a full year of play, Kreines explains they are a mishmash of serialized stories, crew insight, and more – so probably not.

There’s plenty more that speaks to the amount of character work, world-building (like map graffiti and props that tell of a recent rebellion and skyboxes that warn of incoming storms), and lore Firewalk is attempting to inject into Concord off the rip. It’s clear the team wants its players to feel affection for these Freegunners the same way the Overwatch community does with its heroes. Throughout my time with Concord, though, I ponder the idea that a developer can create this affection from the jump. Sure, Overwatch certainly has it, but Blizzard has garnered that over years of work, with incredible gameplay at its core; it didn’t force it into the experience with copious lore entries, a massive library of universe mythology, and more.

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Fortunately for Firewalk, a 5v5 multiplayer shooter doesn’t rest its laurels on lore and storytelling – it’s about the gameplay, and so far, Concord feels great. 

Destiny is the closest comparison I can make, especially regarding its time-to-kill (TTK), map layout, first-person handling, and match progress. Though I was surprised to feel this (undoubtedly influenced by my recent journey to catch up on every Destiny 2 expansion), I probably shouldn’t have been. Director Ryan Ellis, design director Josh Hamrick, lead character designer Jon Weisnewski, and Jerome all have experience working on Destiny 2, and it shows. 

I immediately take a liking to Jabali, a machine gunner who can shoot Life Pulse Orbs at teammates to heal and Hunter Orbs at enemies to deal bursts of damage (you can probably already see the Overwatch comparison). Targeting enemies through Jabali’s aim-down-sights is good fun. With a longer TTK than faster first-person shooters like Call of Duty, I have to focus on accuracy (and headshots) to eliminate enemies before they can eliminate me. Because each hero has unique abilities, it’s critical I use my orbs in the heat of battle. Without the damage of a Hunter Orb, taking out handgun specialist Lennox (the Starlord-esque character from the reveal), whose bullets melt my health bar, would be tough. And even then, I have to watch out for Lennox’s exploding knife and self-heal ability. 

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As I play match after match, I enjoy that I have to think about each Freegunner’s loadout. Will fire sorceress Haymar float above the field to throw down firewalls and blinding flash grenades? Is soldier Teo, who plays most like a typical first-person shooter hero, peering through smoke bomb fields he laid down with unaffected eyesight while I struggle to see anything but grey clouds? Does sniper Vale have a trip mine set around the corner? And does former recycling robot 1-Off have an air barrier down to block incoming projectiles like my orbs, both deployables that persist through each round unless destroyed? These are the seconds-long match-ups I consistently have to consider in every engagement. I enjoy this added strategy, and it separates Concord from the typical whoever-shoots-first-wins experience of the FPS genre. 

These considerations are critical in Trophy Hunt, a team deathmatch variant where you must pick up a killed enemy’s trophy to gain a point. In Cargo Run, which tasks players with securing a Blue Buddy robot and bringing it back to one of two zones, and Clash Point, where players compete for control of a single capture zone, these considerations still matter a lot, but perhaps not how Firewalk intends. The latter two modes are round-based and feature zero respawn. If killed, you’re out until the next round. As a result, the other four players on my team (and the five enemy players) largely ignore the mode-specific objectives and instead focus on taking out the other team first. This is a typical issue with these game modes – looking at you, Search and Destroy in Call of Duty – but I still hope Firewalk finds a way around it in Concord. Otherwise, I can see myself sticking to Trophy Hunt and other team deathmatch-adjacent modes where I’m always in the action, thanks to the ability to respawn. 

Fortunately, regardless of the mode, I have a great time with Concord’s action. It’s frenetic, with plenty of variables between well-designed maps (I enjoy the three of the game’s final 16 I get to check out) and 16 Freegunners, each with unique abilities.

Concord Firewalk Studios 5v5 PvP First Person Shooter PlayStation 5 PC

Firewalk says there aren’t designated Freegunner types, like tank, DPS, or support – instead, characters feature a mix of skills and weaponry that allow them to float between these traditional archetypes. In my experience, though, some characters definitely play like tanks, healers, and assault-focused heroes, and it didn’t take long for my team to consider these builds when creating a crew for a match. On top of all this, there are plenty more systems I couldn’t quite wrap my head around, like individual Crew Building that acts as a subset of your roster, Crew Bonuses, Freegunner variants, and more. But if the post-match summaries, which light up with unlocks and experience bars, are any indication, a lot is going on under the hood of this shooter, and I look forward to learning more about how it all comes together. 

I left this Concord preview significantly more excited for the game’s upcoming release on PlayStation 5, which will hopefully bolster its player base with a simultaneous PC launch. I have plenty of questions about progression, seasonal content, crossplay checks and balances between controller and mouse-and-keyboard players, and whether the emphasis on worldbuilding will pay off, but Firewalk has seemingly nailed the most important part: the gameplay.

Checking Out Concord, PlayStation’s Upcoming 5v5 Hero Shooter | New Gameplay Today

Checking Out Concord, PlayStation’s Upcoming 5v5 Hero Shooter | New Gameplay Today

We got our first big look at Concord, PlayStation’s upcoming 5v5 multiplayer hero shooter, during a State of Play last month. And last week, we traveled to California to go hands-on with the game. You can read Game Informer’s full Concord preview thoughts here, but in short: it feels great and we’re excited to play more. 

We have a lot of questions remaining about the game’s progression, seasonal content, narrative emphasis, and more, but if the handful of hours we’ve played of Concord are any indication, developer Firewalk Studios has, at the very least, created a fun and great-feeling shooter. In today’s New Gameplay Today, host Wesley LeBlanc talks about his visit to PlayStation’s HQ to play the game with Kyle Hilliard and how he felt after checking out 10 of the game’s 16 heroes and three of its gameplay modes. 

 Check it out for yourself in the Concord NGT below: 

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Head to Game Informer’s YouTube channel for more previews, reviews, and discussions of new and upcoming games. Watch other episodes of New Gameplay Today right here.

Two MIT films nominated for New England Emmy Awards

Two MIT films nominated for New England Emmy Awards

Two films produced by MIT were honored with Emmy nominations by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Boston/New England Chapter. Both “We Are the Forest” and “No Drop to Spare” illustrate international conversations the MIT community is having about the environment and climate change.

“We Are the Forest,” produced by MIT Video Productions (MVP) at MIT Open Learning, was one of six nominees in the Education/Schools category. The documentary highlights the cultural and scientific exchange of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Wind Ensemble, and MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble in the Brazilian Amazon. The excursion depicted in the film was part of the ongoing work of Frederick Harris Jr., MIT director of wind and jazz ensembles and senior lecturer in music, to combine Brazilian music and environmental research.

“No Drop to Spare,” created by the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), was nominated in the Environment/Science and Video Essayist categories. The film, produced by John Freidah, MechE senior producer and creative lead, follows a team of researchers from the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center working in Kenya, Morocco, and Jordan to deploy affordable, user-driven smart irrigation technology.

“We Are the Forest” tells the story of 80 MIT student musicians who traveled to Manaus, Brazil in March 2023. Together with Indigenous Brazilian musicians and activists, the students played music, created instruments with found objects from the rainforest, and connected their musical practice to nature and culture. The trip and the documentary culminated with the concert “Hearing Amazônia: Art and Resistance.”

“We have an amazing team who are excited to tell the stories of so many great things that happen at MIT,” says Clayton Hainsworth, director for MVP. “It’s a true pleasure when we get to partner with the Institute’s community on these video projects — from Fred [Harris], with his desire for outreach of the music curriculum, giving students new perspectives and getting beyond the lab; to students getting to experience the world and seeing how that affects their next steps as they go out and make an impact.”

The documentary was produced by Hainsworth, directed by Jean Dunoyer, staff editor at MVP, and filmed by Myles Lowery, field production videographer at MVP. Hainsworth credits Dunoyer with refining the story’s main themes: the universality of music as a common human language, and the ways that Indigenous communities can teach and inform the rest of the globe about the environment and the challenges we are all facing.

“The film highlights the reach of how MIT touches the world and, more importantly, how the world touches MIT,” says Hainsworth, adding that the work was generously supported by A. Neil Pappalardo ’64 and Jane Pappalardo. 

“No Drop to Spare” evoked a similar sentiment from Freidah. “What I liked about this story was the potential for great impact,” says Freidah, discussing the MechE film’s production process. “It was global, it was being piloted in three different places in the world, with three different end users, and had three different applications. You sort of go in with an idea in mind of what the story might be, then things bubble up. In this story, as with so many stories, what rose to the top was the students and the impact they were having on the real world and end users.” 

Freidah has worked with Amos Winter SM ’05, PhD ’11, associate professor of mechanical engineering and MIT GEAR Center principal investigator, to highlight other impact global projects in the past, including producing a video in 2016. That film, “Water is Life,” explores the development of low-cost desalination systems in India. 

While the phrase “it’s an honor to be nominated” might seem cliched, it remains often used because the sentiment almost always rings true. Although neither film triumphed at this year’s awards ceremony, Freidah says there’s much to be celebrated in the final product. 

“Seeing the effect this piece had, and how it highlighted our students, that’s the success story — but it’s always nice also to receive recognition from outside.”

The 47th Boston/New England Emmy Awards Ceremony took place on June 8 at the Marriott Boston Copley Place. A list of nominees and winners can be found on the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston/New England Chapter website. 

Fotini Christia named director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Fotini Christia named director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science, has been named the new director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), effective July 1.

“Fotini is well-positioned to guide IDSS into the next chapter. With her tenure as the director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and as an associate director of IDSS since 2020, she has actively forged connections between the social sciences, data science, and computation,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “I eagerly anticipate the ways in which she will advance and champion IDSS in alignment with the spirit and mission of the Schwarzman College of Computing.”

“Fotini’s profound expertise as a social scientist and her adept use of data science, computational tools, and novel methodologies to grasp the dynamics of societal evolution across diverse fields, makes her a natural fit to lead IDSS,” says Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Christia’s research has focused on issues of conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world, for which she has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen, among others. More recently, her research has been directed at examining how to effectively integrate artificial intelligence tools in public policy.

She was appointed the director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) and an associate director of IDSS in October 2020. SSRC, an interdisciplinary center housed within IDSS in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, focuses on the study of high-impact, complex societal challenges that shape our world.

As part of IDSS, she is co-organizer of a cross-disciplinary research effort, the Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism. Bringing together faculty and researchers from all of MIT’s five schools and the college, the initiative builds on extensive social science literature on systemic racism and uses big data to develop and harness computational tools that can help effect structural and normative change toward racial equity across housing, health care, policing, and social media. Christia is also chair of IDSS’s doctoral program in Social and Engineering Systems.

Christia is the author of “Alliance Formation in Civil War” (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which was awarded the Luebbert Award for Best Book in Comparative Politics, the Lepgold Prize for Best Book in International Relations, and a Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association. She is co-editor with Graeme Blair (University of California, Los Angeles) and Jeremy Weinstein (incoming dean at Harvard Kennedy School) of “Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing: Experiments on Building Trust,” forthcoming in August 2024 with Cambridge University Press.

Her research has also appeared in Science, Nature Human Behavior, Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, NeurIPs, Communications Medicine, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, American Political Science Review, and Annual Review of Political Science, among other journals. Her opinion pieces have been published in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other outlets.

A native of Greece, where she grew up in the port city of Salonika, Christia moved to the United States to attend college at Columbia University. She graduated magna cum laude in 2001 with a joint BA in economics–operations research and an MA in international affairs. She joined the MIT faculty in 2008 after receiving her PhD in public policy from Harvard University.

Christia succeeds Noelle Selin, a professor in IDSS and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. Selin has led IDSS as interim director for the 2023-24 academic year since July 2023, following Professor Martin Wainwright.

“I am incredibly grateful to Noelle for serving as interim director this year. Her contributions in this role, as well as her time leading the Technology and Policy Program, have been invaluable. I’m delighted she will remain part of the IDSS community as a faculty member,” says Huttenlocher.

Wireless receiver blocks interference for better mobile device performance

Wireless receiver blocks interference for better mobile device performance

The growing prevalence of high-speed wireless communication devices, from 5G mobile phones to sensors for autonomous vehicles, is leading to increasingly crowded airwaves. This makes the ability to block interfering signals that can hamper device performance an even more important — and more challenging — problem.

With these and other emerging applications in mind, MIT researchers demonstrated a new millimeter-wave multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) wireless receiver architecture that can handle stronger spatial interference than previous designs. MIMO systems have multiple antennas, enabling them to transmit and receive signals from different directions. Their wireless receiver senses and blocks spatial interference at the earliest opportunity, before unwanted signals have been amplified, which improves performance.

Key to this MIMO receiver architecture is a special circuit that can target and cancel out unwanted signals, known as a nonreciprocal phase shifter. By making a novel phase shifter structure that is reconfigurable, low-power, and compact, the researchers show how it can be used to cancel out interference earlier in the receiver chain.

Their receiver can block up to four times more interference than some similar devices. In addition, the interference-blocking components can be switched on and off as needed to conserve energy.

In a mobile phone, such a receiver could help mitigate signal quality issues that can lead to slow and choppy Zoom calling or video streaming.

“There is already a lot of utilization happening in the frequency ranges we are trying to use for new 5G and 6G systems. So, anything new we are trying to add should already have these interference-mitigation systems installed. Here, we’ve shown that using a nonreciprocal phase shifter in this new architecture gives us better performance. This is quite significant, especially since we are using the same integrated platform as everyone else,” says Negar Reiskarimian, the X-Window Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a member of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of a paper on this receiver.

Reiskarimian wrote the paper with EECS graduate students Shahabeddin Mohin, who is the lead author, Soroush Araei, and Mohammad Barzgari, an RLE postdoc. The work was recently presented at the IEEE Radio Frequency Circuits Symposium and received the Best Student Paper Award.

Blocking interference

Digital MIMO systems have an analog and a digital portion. The analog portion uses antennas to receive signals, which are amplified, down-converted, and passed through an analog-to-digital converter before being processed in the digital domain of the device. In this case, digital beamforming is required to retrieve the desired signal.

But if a strong, interfering signal coming from a different direction hits the receiver at the same time as a desired signal, it can saturate the amplifier so the desired signal is drowned out. Digital MIMOs can filter out unwanted signals, but this filtering occurs later in the receiver chain. If the interference is amplified along with the desired signal, it is more difficult to filter out later.

“The output of the initial low-noise amplifier is the first place you can do this filtering with minimal penalty, so that is exactly what we are doing with our approach,” Reiskarimian says.

The researchers built and installed four nonreciprocal phase shifters immediately at the output of the first amplifier in each receiver chain, all connected to the same node. These phase shifters can pass signal in both directions and sense the angle of an incoming interfering signal. The devices can adjust their phase until they cancel out the interference.

The phase of these devices can be precisely tuned, so they can sense and cancel an unwanted signal before it passes to the rest of the receiver, blocking interference before it affects any other parts of the receiver. In addition, the phase shifters can follow signals to continue blocking interference if it changes location.

“If you start getting disconnected or your signal quality goes down, you can turn this on and mitigate that interference on the fly. Because ours is a parallel approach, you can turn it on and off with minimal effect on the performance of the receiver itself,” Reiskarimian adds.

A compact device

In addition to making their novel phase shifter architecture tunable, the researchers designed them to use less space on the chip and consume less power than typical nonreciprocal phase shifters.

Once the researchers had done the analysis to show their idea would work, their biggest challenge was translating the theory into a circuit that achieved their performance goals. At the same time, the receiver had to meet strict size restrictions and a tight power budget, or it wouldn’t be useful in real-world devices.

In the end, the team demonstrated a compact MIMO architecture on a 3.2-square-millimeter chip that could block signals which were up to four times stronger than what other devices could handle. Simpler than typical designs, their phase shifter architecture is also more energy efficient.

Moving forward, the researchers want to scale up their device to larger systems, as well as enable it to perform in the new frequency ranges utilized by 6G wireless devices. These frequency ranges are prone to powerful interference from satellites. In addition, they would like to adapt nonreciprocal phase shifters to other applications.

This research was supported, in part, by the MIT Center for Integrated Circuits and Systems.

An Enhanced Edition Of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Hits Consoles And PC This August

Developer Aspyr Media and publisher Lucasfilm Games have revealed that an enhanced edition of 2002’s Star Wars: Bounty Hunter will launch on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC this August. More specifically, it hits PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC (via Steam) on August 1, and it brings with it updated visuals and controls and a new skin that harkens back to the original game’s most infamous easter egg. 

In the reveal trailer, we get a look at the graphical improvements Aspyr has implemented in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, but the game still retains that 2002 PlayStation 2 and GameCube charm. This re-release follows a limited PlayStation 4 physical run that launched back in 2019. 

Check out the Star Wars: Bounty Hunter announcement trailer below: 

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If you’re unfamiliar with Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you play as Jango Fett throughout the story, which itself is a prequel to Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. 

In the original game, there was an easter egg message that said, “Cash in all bounties to play as Boba.” However, cashing in all bounties did not let you play as Boba. To make good on that original promise from 2002, Aspyr media has included a Boba Fett skin in Star Wars: Bounty Hunters you can use after completing the game’s campaign. 

An Enhanced Edition Of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Hits Consoles And PC This August

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter hits PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on August 1. 

While waiting for its launch, check out this lengthy gameplay demo of Star Wars Outlaws, another mercenary-centric Star Wars game launching this year. Read Game Informer’s Star Wars Outlaws cover story after that. 

Are you going to check out Star Wars: Bounty Hunter this August? Let us know in the comments below!

Oracle’s HeatWave GenAI: The Future of AI-Powered Databases

Oracle has recently announced HeatWave GenAI, a suite of generative AI capabilities integrated directly into its cloud database offering. With this release, Oracle becomes the first major player to embed large language models (LLMs) and automated vector processing within the database itself, ushering in a new…

Melissa Choi named director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Melissa Choi named director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Melissa Choi has been named the next director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, effective July 1. Currently assistant director of the laboratory, Choi succeeds Eric Evans, who will step down on June 30 after 18 years as director.

Sharing the news in a letter to MIT faculty and staff today, Vice President for Research Ian Waitz noted Choi’s 25-year career of “outstanding technical and advisory leadership,” both at MIT and in service to the defense community.

“Melissa has a marvelous technical breadth as well as excellent leadership and management skills, and she has presented a compelling strategic vision for the Laboratory,” Waitz wrote. “She is a thoughtful, intuitive leader who prioritizes communication, collaboration, mentoring, and professional development as foundations for an organizational culture that advances her vision for Lab-wide excellence in service to the nation.”

Choi’s appointment marks a new chapter in Lincoln Laboratory’s storied history working to keep the nation safe and secure. As a federally funded research and development center operated by MIT for the Department of Defense, the laboratory has provided the government an independent perspective on critical science and technology issues of national interest for more than 70 years. Distinctive among national R&D labs, the laboratory specializes in both long-term system development and rapid demonstration of operational prototypes, to protect and defend the nation against advanced threats. In tandem with its role in developing technology for national security, the laboratory’s integral relationship with the MIT campus community enables impactful partnerships on fundamental research, teaching, and workforce development in critical science and technology areas.

“In a time of great global instability and fast-evolving threats, the mission of Lincoln Laboratory has never been more important to the nation,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “It is also vital that the laboratory apply government-funded, cutting-edge technologies to solve critical problems in fields from space exploration to climate change. With her depth and breadth of experience, keen vision, and straightforward style, Melissa Choi has earned enormous trust and respect across the Lincoln and MIT communities. As Eric Evans steps down, we could not ask for a finer successor.”

Choi has served as assistant director of Lincoln Laboratory since 2019, with oversight of five of the Lab’s nine technical divisions: Biotechnology and Human Systems, Homeland Protection and Air Traffic Control, Cyber Security and Information Sciences, Communication Systems, and ISR and Tactical Systems. Engaging deeply with the needs of the broader defense community, Choi served for six years on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, with a term as vice chair, and was appointed to the DoD’s Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. She is currently a member of the national Defense Science Board’s Permanent Subcommittee on Threat Reduction.

Having dedicated her entire career to Lincoln Laboratory, Choi says her long tenure reflects a commitment to the lab’s work and community.

“Through my career, I have been fortunate to have had incredibly innovative and motivated people to collaborate with as we solve critical national security challenges,” Choi says. “Continuing to work with such a strong, laboratory-wide team as director is one of the most exciting aspects of the job for me.”

Success through collaboration

Choi came to Lincoln Laboratory as a technical staff member in 1999, with a doctoral degree in applied mathematics. As she progressed to lead research teams, including the Systems and Analysis Group and then the Active Optical Systems Group, Choi learned the value of pooling expertise from researchers across the laboratory.

“I was able to shift between a lot of different projects very early on in my career, from radar systems to sensor networks. Because I wasn’t an expert at the time in any one of those fields, I learned to reach out to the many different experts at the laboratory,” Choi says.

Choi maintained that mindset through all of her roles at the laboratory, including as head of the Homeland Protection and Air Traffic Control Division, which she led from 2014 and 2019. In that role, she helped bring together diverse technology and human systems expertise to establish the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Group. Among other achievements, the group provided support to FEMA and other emergency response agencies after the 2017 hurricane season caused unprecedented flooding and destruction across swaths of Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico.

“We were able to rapidly prototype and field multiple technologies to help with the recovery efforts,” Choi says. “It was an amazing example of how we can apply our national security focus to other critical national problems.”

Outside of her technical and advisory achievements, Choi has made an impact at Lincoln Laboratory through her commitments to an inclusive workplace. In 2020, she co-led the study “Preventing Discrimination and Harassment and Promoting an Inclusive Culture at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.” The work was part of a longstanding commitment to supporting colleagues in the workplace through extensive mentoring and participation in employee resource groups.

“I have felt a sense of belonging at the laboratory since the minute I came here, and I’ve had the benefit of support from leaders, mentors, and advocates since then. Improving support systems is very important to me,” says Choi, who will be the first woman to lead Lincoln Laboratory. “Everyone should be able to feel that they belong and can thrive.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Choi helped the laboratory navigate the disruptions — with its operations deemed essential — which she says taught her a lot about leading through adversity.

“We solve hard problems at the laboratory all the time, but to get thrown into a problem that we had never seen before was a learning experience,” Choi says. “We saw the entire lab come together, from leadership to each of the divisions and departments.”

That synergy has also helped Choi form strategic partnerships within and outside of the laboratory to enhance its mission. Drawing on her knowledge of the laboratory’s capabilities and its history of developing impactful systems for NASA and NOAA, Choi recently led the formation of a new Civil Space Systems and Technology Office.

“We were seeing this convergence between Department of Defense and civilian space initiatives, as going to the Moon, Mars, and the cislunar area [between the earth and moon] has become a big emphasis for the entire country generally,” Choi explains. “It seemed like a good time for us to pull those two sides together and grow our NASA portfolio. It gives us a great opportunity to collaborate with MIT centrally, and it ties in with our other strategic directions.”

Building on success

Choi believes her trajectory through the technical ranks of Lincoln Laboratory will help her lead it now.

“That experience gives me a view into what it’s like at multiple levels of the laboratory,” Choi says. “I’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, and I’ve learned from different perspectives and leadership styles. Strong leaders are crucial, but it’s important to recognize that the bulk of the work gets done by the technical, support, and administrative employees across our divisions, departments, and offices. Remembering being an early staff member helps you understand how hard and exciting the work is, and also how critical those contributions are for our mission.”

Choi says she is also looking forward to expanding the laboratory’s collaboration with MIT’s main campus.

“So many areas, from AI to climate to space, have opportunity for us to come together,” Choi says. “We also have some great models of progress, like the Beaver Works Center or the Department of the Air Force – MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator program, that we can build from. Everyone here is very excited about doing that, and it will absolutely be a priority for me.”

Ultimately, Choi plans to lead Lincoln Laboratory using the approach that’s proven successful throughout her career.

“I believe very much that I should not be the smartest person in the room, and I rely on the smart people working with me,” Choi says. “I’m part of a team and I work with a team to lead. That has always been my style: Set a vision and goals, and empower and support the people I work with to make decisions and build on that strategy.”

New MOVEit transfer vulnerabilities that require patching (2024) – CyberTalk

New MOVEit transfer vulnerabilities that require patching (2024) – CyberTalk

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Remember last year’s MOVEit meltdown? Get ready for a reprise…

For anyone who missed last year’s madness, MOVEit Transfer is a popular managed file transfer product sold by Progress Software, which provides business applications and services to more than 100,000 organizations globally.

In 2023, the software code for the MOVEit Transfer product was found to contain multiple vulnerabilities, leading to a rash of ransomware attacks, and data exposure for thousands of organizations.

The level of business exploitation was so severe that it impacted the results of this year’s “Data Breach Investigations Report” (DBIR) from Verizon.

Earlier this month, Progress Software contacted users about two high-severity vulnerabilities, CVE-2024-5805 and CVE-2024-5806. Both are categorized as authentication bypass-style vulnerabilities. Each one has been assigned a 9.1 severity score.

To allow adequate time for patching, the information was under embargo until June 25th. This appears to have been a wise move, as just hours after being made public, at least one vulnerability is seeing active exploit attempts in the wild.

The Shadowserver Foundation has detected exploitation efforts that hone in on honeypot systems, in particular.

The new bugs

“To be clear, these vulnerabilities are not related to the zero-day MOVEit Transfer vulnerability we reported in May 2023,” said a Progress Software spokesperson.

CVE-2024-5806 is an improper authentication vulnerability in MOVEit’s SFTP module, which can potentially lead to authentication bypass in some instances.

Cyber security researchers have noted that this CVE could be weaponized to “impersonate any user on the server.”

CVE-2024-5805 is another SFTP-associated authentication bypass vulnerability, which affects MOVEit Gateway version 2024.0.0.

Action items

As a cyber security leader, have your team check on whether or not your MOVEit Transfer software is up-to-date. Patches are available for all vulnerabilities.

Communicate to your team that these vulnerabilities are a priority, as they have serious business implications. If patching hasn’t yet been completed, emphasize the importance of patching quickly. After patching, confirm successful implementation.

Additional considerations

Reassess your organization’s vulnerability to ransomware attacks. Take a layered approach to cyber security and consider additional cyber security measures. You might want to invest in proactive processes like vulnerability assessments and red teaming. In addition, review and update your incident response plan, as to address potential MOVEit Transfer exploitation attempts.

Further information

As compared to the MOVEit Transfer exposure numbers from last year, experts say that the numbers appear similar – the geographies and networks where MOVEit Transfer is observed also mirror those of the 2023 incident.

See CyberTalk.org’s past MOVEit Transfer coverage here. Get more insights into software supply chain vulnerabilities here.

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