There have been rumors floating around for the past couple of days that MFJ was going to discontinue production. That seemed almost impossible to me because they’ve become such a big part of amateur radio. Nonetheless, the rumors are true. Martin Jue sent out this message earlier today:
April 25, 2024
Dear Fellow Hams and Friends,
It is with a sad heart as I write this letter
As many of you have heard by now, MFJ is ceasing its on-site production in Starkville, Mississippi on May 17, 2024. This is also the same for our sister companies’ Ameritron, Hygain, Cushcraft, Mirage and Vectronics.
Times have changed since I started this business 52 years ago. Our product line grew and grew and prospered. Covid changed everything in businesses including ours. It was the hardest hit that we have ever had and we never fully recovered.
I turned 80 this year. I had never really considered retirement but life is so short and my time with my family is so precious.
I want to thank all of our employees who have helped build this company with me over the years. We have many employees who have made MFJ their career for 10, 20, 30, 40 and more years.
We are going to continue to sell MFJ products past May 17, 2024. We have a lot of stock on hand. We will continue to offer repair service work for out-of-warranty and in-warranty units for the foreseeable future.
Finally, a special thanks to all of our customers and our dealers who have made MFJ a worldwide name and a profitable business for so many years. You all are so much appreciated.
Sincerely Yours, 73s
Martin F. Jue, K5FLU
I would be surprised if someone didn’t buy the company—there was talk that DX Engineering made an offer—but at this point, it doesn’t appear that there’s a buyer. Stay tuned.
Hackers backed by a powerful nation-state have been exploiting two zero-day vulnerabilities in Cisco firewalls in a five-month-long campaign that breaks into government networks around the world, researchers reported Wednesday.
The attacks against Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliances firewalls are the latest in a rash of network compromises that target firewalls, VPNs, and network-perimeter devices, which are designed to provide a moated gate of sorts that keeps remote hackers out. Over the past 18 months, threat actors—mainly backed by the Chinese government—have turned this security paradigm on its head in attacks that exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in security appliances from the likes of Ivanti, Atlassian, Citrix, and Progress. These devices are ideal targets because they sit at the edge of a network, provide a direct pipeline to its most sensitive resources, and interact with virtually all incoming communications.
On Wednesday, it was Cisco’s turn to warn that its ASA products have received such treatment. Since November, a previously unknown actor tracked as UAT4356 by Cisco and STORM-1849 by Microsoft has been exploiting two zero-days in attacks that go on to install two pieces of never-before-seen malware, researchers with Cisco’s Talos security team said. Notable traits in the attacks include:
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Yesterday, I had an Intro to netlab presentation at the wonderful RIPE SEE meeting in Athens. The presentation is already online; I will update this blog post once the recordings are published.