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Cracking Military Devices
Kenneth Ng was one of the folks who wrote to us about
an article CNN is running, courtesy of Federal Computer Weekly. The piece talks about scenarios that have caused the Army some consternation -- namely, crackers being able to take the wheel of remote-controlled military weapons systems like tanks, ships and planes. I dunno -- I kinda like the idea of being able to play Grand Theft Auto [?] with an M-1 Abrams tank.
That's what's carrying the throttle commands from NT to the engine controllers on the Yorktown. VB app at the helm.
They're still looking into redundancy of communications, maybe even going with some standard protocols.
But if fire takes out that link, it's back to shouting on a voice link to engineering for flank speed.
Sure the military has some screw ups, but most of those guys are better than you'll find in the civilian world. Come the Navy, Air Force and Army each have 500,000 people... any group that large, some losers are bound to creep in.
Of course, the Corps was the best thing to happen to me, so maybe I'm a bit biased.
And restrictions on hi-capacity maga^H^H^H^Hinternet connections which make cracking sites easier. We need to protect children. If fucking the world over, the occasional wrongful imprisonment and siezure of an individuals assetts and throwing away some constitutional rights can save *just* *one* *life*, it'll all be worth it (*sniffle*). Because I care. I care about you. I care about kids.
Obviosuly those malicious crackers infected your keyboard controller with some sort of virus. If you can't safeguard that, you're certainly nothing to fear! I *laugh* in your general direction!
If the detonator had been running Linux it would have malfunctioned and no explosion would have occured. YOU MADE THE WHOLE STORY UP!!!
... you just know that if they've done these break in tests on their own systems, they've done them on enemy systems too (either captured enemy systems or live ones)...
I've only got five gallons of gas left...
But nobody ever listens to me.
Your are wrong they have started to attach light wepontry to survalance drones, and the "bomb squad" is armered with a shotgun. Not to menchon that almost all of the target aquasitiong systems are automated (via satalite)
But the US would really like to attack Canada, just because of the crappy beer you put out. They others would be due to a hack.
Translation to Canadian: "But the US would really like to attack Canada, just because of the crappy beer they put out, Eh?"
Except that MAC OS is about as secure as Windows 95/98, my refridgerator, and possibly my pants zipper. I enjoy MAC's, but the best way to secure them from other people on a network is by pulling the CAT5 outta the wall. too lazy to login. dj funkynutz
1. GPS creep might work. Sounds like that Bond movie, though, eh? I'm guessing that might be harder than we think,
As far as I know, nobody has even done enough cracking on GPS to even be able to decrypt the military grade GPS signal (the one with 1 meter accuracy).
ICBM's are well... ballistic. Not remote controlled. (Maybe some advanced warheads target using GPS, but it is still not remote control per say.)
They are not hooked up to the internet. Currently these systems have their own wireless network that is encrypted with a scheme that is highly classified.
yeah, thats right, because secretly the US wants to bomb Taiwan, just like they want to bomb London, paris, Berlin, and Tokyo. I'm in Canada and am already building my bomb shelter and stockpiling guns for when they attack.
Synthesized voice magically follows David to every terminal!
Defcon 1-5 meanings reversed! (Defcon 1 is "peace", not 5)
"David, Machines don't call people."
Launch code string is cracked one character at a time!
Exploding consoles! (Star Trek has this problem too.)
Modem tones are bogus.
Chirp sound for each character typed.
Staff not counting bodies-in/bodies-out on the tour group. David should've clubbed a tourist, hid the body, and took his place.
The problem is limited to mere harassment value. Even though the military has some really cool toys, the fact is that the battle is won by humans, not machines. Military equipment is so unreliable in the first place that the military trains with and without these systems - the "just in case" scenario where the equipment doesn't work happens more often than not. So such "attacks" would not only be difficult to orchestrate, but have little tactical value to the enemy
Actually, this is quite serious. Cruise missiles aren't toys, but the kind of people who might crack into the control computer might think they are. And if ever main battle tanks and such were fully automated, it would only get worse. Kids who can't even spell depleted uranium would be throwing it around like nothing.
That cares the hell out of me.
And learn how to write.
LOL
Uh... I thought NSA was a .mil org...
Ha.
:)
Actually, the scenario you describe might be more likely than one might think.
Here's a ``for instance.''
For no apparent reason I decided to do some grocery shopping at 2am the other night (and no it wasn't 'cause I couldn't sleep because I was afraid the clown would eat me.)
Anyway, at around 4pm the next afternoon I was awakened by a knocking at my chamber (studio apartment) door (kind of like in The Raven).
It took like 4 sets of knocks to get me to open the door because I was
A) mildly disoriented, having been awoken from a sound sleep (I literally jumped up off the bed at the sound of the first knock before I knew what was going on)
B) Assuming that it was some dorky gradeschool kid selling wrapping paper for a school project who would give up after a couple of knocks and move on to the next door down
C)Not particularly interested in having company of any kind at that moment.
After the third knock I tiptoed over to the door (thus alerting the knockee as to my presence by changing the quality of the light being refracted out into the hallway via the peephole once I place my eye in front of it).
The knockee turned out to be a uniformed police officer.
What the fuck? I thought to myself.
At first I thought he might just be going door to door to survey residents as to the quality of the service their local police department was affording them. (This was the reason for a similar visit by a similarly attired officer about a year ago. "Yeah, keep up the good work. Whatever." was my response on that occassion (well except for the "whatever" part).
Anyway. Guess what the first words out of this cops mouth were.
"Do you mind if I have a look around?"
My initial response was "Um, no sure" and then "Well wait a minute -- why?"
Talk about a mind fuck.
Why should I have to let some cop into my private residence? But as soon as I said no (for privacy reasons -- I am not, for example, a drug dealer, and I have nothing to hide, but my place was looking really grungy that day (it still is, come to think of it) and I did not want this cop roaming around the piles of dirty laundry on the floor of the main room of my pad.
But as soon as I said no, I felt like I was coming off like I had something to hide -- Catch 22. Obviously he was trained to use this line, and I am sure it works on a lot of people. Fortunately I had come across an e-text a while back that talked about the fact that you do not have to let the cops into your house if they do not have a warrant (except in special cases obviously - "hot pursuit" for example). And that was the second thing that crossed my mind when the office asked me to let him in point blank. (The first was "Um bahhh.. sure... bahhh... come on in.... bahhh... "(bahhh = the sound sheep make.)
Well it turned out that the reason for his visit was to inform me that he had ticketed my car because I had left it parked out front (near the fire lane) for too long in the process of unloading groceries from my trunk.
I'm sure once I told him that my car had actually been parked there all night he probably assumed I had been drunko the clown at the time I parked the car (instead of, apparently, an Alzehimers candidate -- how the fuck could I forget to park my car after unloading the groceries?! I still can't believe I did that.) I almost let him in just so he could see that there were not stacks of beer cans littering the kitchen, etc (I gave up the partying lifestyle after graduating from college.), but then it occurred to me that whatever I told him he probably would just assume I was lying or "covering something up" anyway (people DO tend to lie I have noticed.)
In retrospect I am glad I stood my ground and did not let him in. Actually I did him a favor -- if he had happened to get a glance at the condition of my bathroom he probably would have hurled. Luckily the maid comes on Thursday.
But watch... I'll probably get served with a warrant later in the week.)
Seriously though... is it possible that he added me to some database of "suspicious characters" because I chose not to invite him inside?
There is another.
-- Yoda
As a former employee of one of General Dynamics subcontractors, I have been aboard more than one Aegis cruiser while it was under construction. I can tell you for a fact that the critical systems onboard Aegis run HP/UX and _not_ NT.
The NT fiasco you refer to was part of a Navy mandated test; the vessel involved was not using the standard computer systems, but was outfitted as a testbed for the NT systems.
We wound up joking around the office for months about how the subsequent system failures brought whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"...
Why aren't PC Anywhere and Carbon Copy classified as cracking tools like Back Orifice is?
I think the GPL ought to have a clause added to it which prohibits the use of any GPLed software from being used to kill people. It's just the right thing to do. How would you feel if your GPL code was used by Hussein to control the drone gas planes that sent 10000 helpless kurds to a horrible death? You are responsible for what your code does. Just like gunmakers and gun crime, tobacco and health problems, etc.
The article says that actual attempts to hack the "equipment" may be difficult for a battle worn enemy, and that opportunities may be fleeting, but if I remember correctly I recently read an article about an intra-tank info network to track friendlies and enemies and position. I for one would think that a DOS attack on the network would cause more problems than someone to take over control of even just one tank. Besides who says the hacks have to be performed from the front line where the battle weary enemy is?
Heck even my loghost has the transmit pin on the NIC cut, which makes it pretty secure.
Just how is an Ethernet connection supposed to work without one of its' connections? Or are you just being a wise ass?
I believe the quote was "Global Thermonuclear War"
but Taiwan is in a defense contract with America.
And as any Native American can tell you, the US always lives up to its treaty obligations...
PCA is the biggest piece of SHIT remote control software I've worked with. Getting it to function at all is a miracle. It's like everything else from Symantec -- good engineering idea, piss-poor execution.
"What if" is a wonderful game. One can think of a number of ways things that can go to hell with technology. I'm not sure whether to sign and say what a ploy for easy funding or say how stupid are the defense contractors building the systems?
Watch for Cnet to run a sensationalistic headline tonight.
Watch for a call from a california senator for increased funding.
Watch for a "near-miss" hack attack as the funding measure hits the floor.
This BS, as with cracking, is just a game. Watch me plant a story next week about a virus that infected my stereo system. Planted in the right places, it may end up on slashdot.
Boy, I guess you told him.
You really ought not talk about the details of those systems. You could land in a bunch of trouble that way. We weren't even allowed to take a POD (plan of the day) off-base, let alone talk about the hardware details of military crypto...
Yeah, I saw that "faking of navigation data" part, too. My opinion of that is that somebody has been watching James Bond in "Tomorrow Never Dies" once too many times. (too lazy to log in)
Don't know if he was serious, but in theory, it could work. The transmitting station would have to enter in a static ARP entry and only use the UDP protocol (syslog in this case), and no TCP. Only thing I don't know about is if the NIC would link up without the transmit pair functioning.
It might help if they stopped insisting on running their systems with NT.....
No, they would rather blame it on "hackers" rather than take responsibility by using a proven secure open source security model. Besides, it makes good press when little kids get a script and fuck things up.
Its 10:00pm, do you know where your kids are surfing?
This should put a chill into military plans. Forget about crackers, consider the outcome.
No, that is not particularly funny.
Wait! I have a better one. Let's have aliens attacking earth, and then have a script kiddie decrypt their systems and insert some malicious commands -- like, say a virus -- and that way save earth. That'd be cool, as it would redeem haxors in the eyes of the world.
Will there be any prequels?
Ubertroll, Splendid display of ignorance and sheer buffoonery. Who should control it if not the military? Who should use it if not the military? Ponder and respond well...sparky. T-Rex
Obviously, this post disturbs me deeply. The thought of the clown remotely using military assets to blow a hole in my door or shoot me here at my keyboard is the most frightening insight I've experienced to date. I will definitely be awake for the next few days.
Check out RawTruth.com for News, Stuff, and MP3 Radio! News For Your Digital Diet! ATTN Moderators: moderate this post down if RawTruth.com kicks ass!
"Yes I wrote SATAN, but *I* didn't crack those root nameservers and bring down the net! That evil script kiddie did!"
Just keep on blaming everyone else for what they do with your creations, but someday, you won't be able to pass the buck.
*except* when someone gets ahold of the requisite hardware and associated softwares/codes.
Never underestimate the power of social engineering...
Really. My buddy K1n6Kr4x0R on IRC gave me this Linux binary. He said it was a cool tank game and said to run it as root. I did and he was right. Now you're telling me it's real?!
Thank you. That is all.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Jeff "Master" Bates.
I hope you enjoyed that.
As for playing GTA in a tank, I did that earlier today (GTA2, not a real tank, foo) and it was fun. I made $500000. Then the piggies took me out of my tank and arrested me. Why the hell doesn't the player know how to lock the door to his tank?
Ohh, that reminded me of a cop joke. More like a rhyme:
I want bacon I want pork
Run piggy Run piggy I've got a fork
Run piggy Run piggy Run piggy Run
Run piggy Run piggy I've got a gun
Say it really fast, guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
Thank you for reading my insignificant troll.
--
...than having the military people in control of that stuff.
Eat hot flaming death you Republican schmuck. Your're probably old enough to vote, aren't you? That cares the hell out of me.
And learn how to write.
If the human creatures will not understand Relativity, very well....Ursula K LeGuin
This thinking deeply concerns me. It appears that they are considering this as a purely tactical vulnerability, rather than as a strategic one. Rather than worry about an opposing force compromising tank controls in a single engagement, this suggests a very real possibility of a systematic hijacking of central control systems by an enemy, either military or what is euphemistically called a "rogue element."
If guidance systems and foe recognition systems alone can be compromised, one can wreak essentially unlimited havoc by (e.g.) sending troops unwittingly into the lines of enemy fire, causing troops to engage friendly troops unknowingly, or even drawing third parties into the fray by sending troops at another country. (Imagine if American troops in Korea had attacked China by mistake?)
Most seriously, such an attack would not necessarily be obvious even in retrospect; the usual errors associated with any military operation (just where did that enemy unit go again?) might be enough to obscure the true origin of these systematic errors over a prolonged period of time. Only a continuous process of error analysis (the statistical frequency of various sorts of errors, measured by the disagreement of multiple independent detection systems; e.g. AWACS versus ground-based reconaissance versus satellite reconaissance) could detect such attacks reliably, and that only over a prolonged period of time.
I think that this reveals a far more systematic weakness in modern, highly computerized and highly networked weaponry than the military has been willing to admit before; let us hope that they do not ignore the very pressing need for qualitatively new forms of defense by appealing to arguments such as tactical inapplicability.
...Hemos in charge of military weaponry. I hope Natalie Portman lives inside a fortress of some kind!
Unfortunately, I feel that I have to post this as an AC.
Here is the real story of how an Air Force officer "controlled a Navy warship remotely".
The Air Force Officer in question (lets call him Fred) was at a Joint (meaning all armed services were involved, Army, Navy, et al) Interoperability demonstration in the Boston area. His resaon for being at the demonstration was to perform live penetration attempts on DoD computer systems for any of the high-ranking officers who might stop by their booth. Fred's computer was connected to a worldwide command and control (C2) network which was NOT connected to the internet, so he could potentially hack into C2 systems worldwide.
One day, a Navy Lt Commander (O-5) stopped by the booth. He asked Fred if it was possible to break into computers on board deployed Navy ships. Fred told him that it was quite possible. The Commander then asked Fred to try to penetrate the computers on board his ship, which was deployed in the Mediterranean. Fred, assuming the Commander had the authority to make this request, agreed to do so.
Fred broke into the systems quite easily, and the Commander was duly impressed. But the story doesn't stop there! Once the Navy senior leadership found out that an Air Force officer had broken into an operational Navy system, all hell broke loose. The Navy wanted to crucify Fred, but he had simply been following the orders of the Lt Commander. The Lt Cmdr, however, did get crucified.
So, the reality of the situation was:
- The Navy ship was NOT accessed from a hotel room
- The Navy ship was NOT access from the Internet
This is *so* not funny. Sig11 must definitely moderate himself up. Especially since no real moderator ever reads up to post #68. Sig11 is a karma whore.
I proved this some months back. As a clinical psychiatrist, I would love to examine "Signal 11". I am very interested in what would motivate someone to create multiple logins and generate enough posting history to garner enough karma to give him the opportunity to moderate his own posts. I imagine he is a sad little person living in his grandma's basement, periodically sodomizing his young nephew.
Indeed. Imagine what a well-placed tfn/trinoo DDoS could do to in a critical situation!
If I recall correctly, and F-14 is not a fly by wire aircraft. Kinda hard to take over that by remote control. :)
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
I didn't mention any details you couldn't get off of FAS.org ... :-)
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
It would be even harder to take over by remote control seeing as how the "wires" only connect to the stick and pedals in the cockpit. How are you going to hack that?
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
The military wants to control their systems where ever they are. That is why they have these problems. Think the general says to to soldier turn left The general see that he is turing right the general will make him turn left. It is designed to take control from the outside so it is possible that can take that control if they want to. It is all about design my friends.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
wopr:~# _
This reminds me of a movie...
Lieutenant Saavik!
Quick! Punch up the Reliant's command console...
Now, order the Reliant to lower it's shields.
FIRE!!!!!! (kaboom)
You did it, Captian!
I DID NOTHING! All I did was get caught with my britches down.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
While I might believe a compromise of a ship computing system -- ships like carriers are floating cities, after all, with huge infrastructures, lots of computers, and multiple nuclear reactors -- even high tech aircraft have a clear separation in their design between avionics and the controls, even if the vehicle is fly-by-wire. One of the most automated designs considered in recent decades was the Army's LHX helo. It cut its funding cut badly, but pilots have this Thing about handing over too much control to the boxes, even if there are compelling cases to be made that letting the boxes control would improve survivability. I strongly suspect the electronics in tanks serve a communications and advisory capacity. Besides, doctrine says that, eg, option to fire or engage always requires a human decision. Now, some of the FSU aircraft are, indeed, capable of being flow from the ground, although with collapse of infrastructure and desire to sell to the international market for currency, the manufacturers have recently made them more independent. So, my assessment is this is a military "wolf cry" on a theme of current concern to extract more funds for pet projects from the public using the military's accomplices, the Congress.
Jan Theodore Galkowski, (Oo) http://www.smalltalkidiom.net/ MySQL,PHP,ETL,SQL,MinGW C, and plucking the Web
The M-1 Abrams is a 4 person tank if I remember, so bring your friends over if you want to go fully nutz in the proper military approved fashion.
Is OpenSSH standard on the Abrams yet?
All the military needs to do is use lax security all over the armed forces, and then get strict laws passed with heavy jail-terms for any country that tries to break in. That should do the trick, and it is already in line with the methods the rest of the government has been using.
This sort of story has been flitting through the press for years. A slightly new spin though, at least they are starting to get a little inventive. :) It is not going to happen. You cannot telnet to navigation.uss-cybersub.mil and take control of a nuclear sub. These systems are not connected to public networks. I am not particularly knowledgeable about what they use, but my guess is HEAVILY encrypted satelite transmission. So you basically need to hi-jack a satelite, break the governments encryption, hope they aren't using some obscure ass language :), fake some command orders, and hope that the commander of the unit is generally clueless and doesn't ask the superiors why they are suddenly attacking Canada. Not exactly something a script-kiddie is going to be able to do.
Q.
Yeah, I just got out of the Military about a year ago and some of this stuff is just funny (well not really). The system we had ran on SunOS 4.1.3 on new(! in 1997 !) SPARCStation 20s. You weren't supposed to be able to get a command shell but oclock was in your startup, just set an alarm and set xterm as the program to run when the alarm goes off, viola! I never tried to get root, although I could have used it a few time instead of trying to work with tech support when something went awry, there were a few known security vulnerabilities, like in tooltalk, that probably never got fixed (in 1999!)
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Amen to that, the Weather software I used, AWDS (Automated Weather Distribution System), was very ugly and crufty (and no hope of Y2K compliance, I hope they aren't still trying to use it). It was designed in the '80s but never funded or fielded untill the '90s, but they didn't update their hardware or software specs so people got 10 year old technology at 10 year old prices (remember how much that 40MB HDD cost 15 years ago). It ran on a "Barco Chromatics" machine running what appeared to be a Unix variant (never heard of them, but at least we were able to cannablize the SCSI drives for our 386 desktop machines (in 1997!))
Many of the features didn't work, or were too slow, it had much that was tailored to the Meterologist (ability to define some custom algorythms and do interesting data analysis (LGGs)) but were pretty useless to the work-a-day Forecaster and the features that would have helped were incomplete or broken (useless satellite images, poor/late vector charts from Global Weather, etc.)
They've been patching this system for many, many years and have almost got it useable but because it doesn't even have a hope of Y2K compliance they have to scrap it. Of course when I left last May the next system appeared to still be in the planning stages, without any code actually written. Well they were going to move everything to the WWW, I hope it worked out for them.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
They are "upgrading" to a NT system because they think that it will be "easier to use", of course they are just fooling themselves. Where I currently work we use Novell and ZENWorks to manage Windows workstations and there isn't anything better or easier to use, it just requires a little elbow grease. For managing Windows workstations Novell is the best thing going (even if NetWare OS is crufty and really only good for file/print duty)
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Ever seen the police force try to stop a tank?
Cop: Look at that guy go.
By stander: Yea, but there went my car!
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
I would have though that with military tech. being, what, 5 years or more in advance of what we civilians get they would be using multiple signal, spread spectrum, 2GB encryption keys and a slew of other technologies that make it at least infeasable to try and crack.
Alas, this isn't really the case anymore. Most military areospace computer technology is quite primitive by civilian standards. The problem is mainly radiation hardened electronic components. The highest end RAD-hardened CPU at the moment is a 486-ish device. Work to get a hardened pentium in production has faltered recently. Basically it just doesn't make any financial sense for any IC manufacturers to go through the trouble of developing these devices when they have such a limited market.
After reading some comments, I also came up with something else that could be just as deadly---
:)
causing the ship/tank/plane to lose connectivity with the controller. I'm sure they may program in some generic routines for self defense/keep alive techniques, but maybe that would give "the enemy" enough of an advantage to destroy everything that is remotely controlled....
I think that would almost be more dangerous to us if the enemies figure out how to cut communications. As in traditional war, communication is key, and with big hefty robots, while there is no human factor at that point, I'm sure some government big wig will get pissed if they lose a few billion dollars worth of planes.
Karnal
Let's not forget David's Sling, featuring self-controlled weapons with remote links. The focus is on development and use of the weapons, not network attacks.
Not likely. Doing so would require specialized and intimate knowledge of the system(s) in question. This would mean actually having worked with the system(s) or working for the contractor which built them.
It would also require physical access or having a close proximity to these system(s). This is NOT something that Joe Hacker could do from his home.
It's possible a disgruntal contractor or military person could pass information to a hostile government. Even then, the chances of the system(s) being remotely hacked is not likely. And since all communications are encrypted ( No! The internet does NOT count! ) it would be almost impossible to do.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
You wouldn't even need any artillery if you could have your enemy's 'smart' weapons chase them home..
Well, some minor problems with this. First, the purpose of artillery is to sow disruption amongst the enemy and make it difficult for them to mass together for both attacks and defences. 'Smart' weapons could be retargeted to attack the CQs and HQs from the side they came from, but they're not as effective as a nice rolling barrage at instilling terror amongst the soldiers. Perhaps in paralyzing the command and control structures and perhaps pinning down the air forces.
The other problem is one caused by everyone playing all these nice computer and video games. You keep forgetting that it's not a level playing field. In any given conflict between the US or NATO vs someone else, we are the ones with the 'smart' weapons, or (let's hope) the JATO-assisted dumb bombs (way cheaper). So almost any hack is going to be used against us, not against them.
Will in Seattle
Why, if the Army really thinks this could happen, would they advertise it?
/. do the security threat analysis and brainstorming for them, at no cost to the taxpayer.
Maybe they realize that the real security experts don't work for them. Or maybe they've clued in that it's cheaper to have
Or, it could just be that they got a batch of bad circuit boards for some mil hardware forced on them by some Senator from New Jersey that they can't replace, and they're trying to innocculate themselves against the inevitable failure during combat when the weapons fire against friendlies.
Will in Seattle
I've seen stuff on remote jeeps too, massively armored little boxes with cameras for scouting.
... maybe you could hack that baby, and run over some guys in their rucks or at least move at high speed into an ammo dump. Probably more effective to use it for the camera intel though.
...
Yeah, those are wierd dohickeys. Now we're talking
Totally Skynet if they wire some attack capable vehicle though
Will in Seattle
Yes, it is the same thing. Just with a different method of access.
Maybe the next Bond movie will be about 007 hacking his way into some foreign army's attempt at world domination. And subverting it with misdirection and false orders via signals.
Will in Seattle
You mean like the Chinese Embassy bombing in Belgrade?
How do you know that wasn't a hack?
Will in Seattle
..but since when to are tanks, planes and warships unmanned?
Actually, those cool drone planes are unmanned. No payload, but a nice camera and all that.
I guess you could intentionally crash it into another plane or do a top-down crash into a tank. But it's probably better used for taking on a joyride to a fuel dump.
Will in Seattle
You're referring to the "must accept any interference recieved" clause, right? I always thought that just meant that the device couldn't bitch about other devices bothering it.
Johan
Most missiles (obviously unmanned) can be partially remote controlled. One could change the target or just tell it to blow up at will. Detonating an ICBM a few seconds after firing would be rather messy.
I want to play Command And Conquer with real tanks, just to get access to auxillary weapons....Why use a gunboat when I can get my hands on a cruiser? Take THAT, Noddies!:) Or alternatively, I think an Abrams would be sufficient to silence your neighbor's aggravating dog.
Having used the Wind River Real Time OS Tornado, I have to say it is far superior to Linux in terms of memory allocation, multi-threading, and real-time applications. A bit buggy on the SLIP implementation, though.
Of course, XFree86 *really* sucks on it...
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Not only that... but there's a LOT lower political cost to losing a unmanned vehicle versus a manned one. The U.S. leadership tends to be *very* skittish about (U.S.) casualties, and if DARPA and friends develop better unmanned devices, it'll help avoid that issue.
And, it's hard to interrogate a machine for battle plans, as long as it doesn't store that information. Could be useful when going up against forces that don't exactly respect the Geneva Conventions.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Sounds good. Then sit back and wait for the TLAM-N's to come from the nearest carrier and blow your country to hell. This is the joy of carrier battle groups. The fight will be brought immediately to your home turf. Even if you used nonnuclear EMPs, you would still be seeing a lot of Tomahawks flying into your country with conventional, cluster, and non-nuc-EMP warheads. If we shot 200-odd at Osama Bin Laden to get the press off the Lewinsky thing, imagine what we'd do if someone REALLY pissed us off. You forget the old military equation. Infantry + cluster munitions = pink mist. To engage ground troops in any meaningful way is to provoke the wrath of offshore fleets, falling squarely into the "bad things" category. Not to mention the fact that these chaff-dropping bombers would have to stay airborne for, oh, say 10 minutes, which is hard to do with F-14's and Phoenix missiles "all up in" your airspace.
And where's this "crippled" argument coming from? (Soldier + M16 + GPS) - GPS = perfectly capable of performing.
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
And if you could write a SCRIPT, for the kiddies to use to do this, that would of course be:
Auto Grand Theft Auto.
It might help if they stopped insisting on running their systems with NT.....
Cheers,
SuperG
Somebody should send the Pentagon a copy of the Security HOWTO for Linux. One of the first things discussed is, "Don't assume they won't find you. Don't assume they won't look. Don't assume they won't find your weakness." (My wording.)
Don't you think it's time to start communicating?
this type of thing is really scary... I mean giving a government a BFG is one thing, some cracker gaining access to that BFG is another thing entirely.
I would much rather have someone hack into my automated home system and put my coffee maker on the fritz than have a tank drive through my living room.
- passion
Talking about Hacking Through Air, have you read the FCC regualtions carefully?
In effect, they say that the device must not protect itself against external interference and/or probing.
This also reminds me of the NSA's "Clipper Chip". I wonder if the military will be using *those*.
--- I hate my sig
> like corporate America, is starting to have trouble finding people able to run the things they need run.
They are having trouble finding people at the wages they want to pay. Its not 'they are having trouble finding people.'
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Good point, it used to be that commercial equipment borrowed from old military design elements. There was always a healthy lag before any products that could possibly effect military performance were released to the public access.
Now with military spending programs looking for ways to cut back on costs by using "commercial where available" products there is a probability that damaging information could be gleaned from corporate databases.
This sounds to much like Y2K to me, really. Nothing happened, someone got disapointed that technology did not end the world.
So now its, "Well would if 'hackers' (Crackers) break into our systems and blow everyone up."
Good thing there is no time table to disprove this one. Can't wait for the new anti-craker-terrorism laws....
Seriously, tho this is scary as hell. I sure hope the nukes still require a couple of keys to be turned.
He ran out of gas.
Uh, no. That would be almost as bad as running on NT. Unless you happen to have a realtime, fully rudendant, fail-safe, ultra secure version of Linux in your pocket. No, I thought not. I like Linux as much as the next hack, I also like SunOs and FreeBSD but I would never run a milatary app on any of those os's. If you want to see a Mil-grade os check out the fellos at Wind River not that they are perfect and I would not want to run a word prosseser that runs under ther stuff but If I wher to try to control a flying robot that could blast the hell out of a city I might consiter them.
And yes I know that I have bad spelling!!!
The ECDIS (Electronic Charting Display and Informatino System) on board all the big US Navy ships. Talk about the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).
(null)
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
Hmm...If this isn't a good enough reason to ditch NT and use linux or MAC os, I don't know any other...
Reality is an Illusion created by sleep depravation
It sounds like you should've got a bonus, instead of getting fired. These guys can't take security very seriously. I'd love to see US bombed by its own airplanes. Stupidity deserves its fate.
- Steeltoe
What do you do today to limit yourself?
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I do believe that the U.S. Army has in fact been experimenting with armed and unmaned combat drones for some aerial attacks Cryptacool
Ah yes. Because you'll be quite safe in Zimbabwe, high-tech mecca that it is. Oops, is that a cracker-controlled ICBM coming in?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This could seriously put American soldiers at risk and with a President like Clinton that doesn't care about the military, it will take a republican or reform party president to fix this. Clinton would only fix it if it was reported that you could shoot off icbm's like bottle rockets. For those between 18 and 25 reading /. don't say "well I'm not goin in the military, this doesn't affect me" because it does. With Tawain and China moving closer to war every day, so do we. We are bound by treaty to enter any war between Tawain and China on Tawain's side. Also think of it like this, suppose a cracker knocks out the guidance systems on a F15 squadron and they crash into a neighborhood or business district and kill a bunch of people. We don't need more laws as the crackers will just laugh at those.
Just do what some guy did here (Perth, Western Australia) a few years ago.
Just walk into the army barracks, drive out in a tank, drive it up the main freeway towards the city etc
Just be sure to learn to secure the hatch properly. This guy didnt, and ended up with a smoke grenade in his lap...
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Well, some of the newer things the military has been playing with involved unmanned, remote controlled weaponry. Removing the remote-control interface would most likely make these weapons less effective.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I think I read this on the l0pht site somewhere.
Anyone remember that alleged nsa key that Microsoft put into windows? I wonder how the army would feel about that.
Okay, so it wasn't controlled remotely, but a few years ago an Marine reservist did drive away with a tank in San Diego. As I recall, the police just followed him until he got hung up on the center divider of the highway.
Maybe we could get some real diplomacy.
Not something likely to happen anytime soon. Main reasons being:
Just my $0.02,
q
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
Hey! You sank my battleship!
Wireless comms aren't totally secure though, just harder. (Ok, a helluva lot harder, but for the people that REALLY wanna do it, they'd have resources at their disposal - not thinking of 15 yr old 1337 H4X0R's with Netbus)
Actually, anti-tank missles have hung wire off for decades. It allows attack choppers to fire guided missles at targets, with out the need for expensive guidance systems. 80,000 feet sounds like quite abit since that's around 15 miles. I'd bet the amount of wire is more like 20,000 feet.
Besides protecting the pilot's life, the pilot can also do 20G air maneuvers that would kill a human being (9Gs max). The fighter plane could be used to maximum efficiency (unlike now) where the human is the limiting performance factor.
No, not even close.
Just a voice from the cockpit,
Wigs
--Flying is the second greatest feeling you can have. The greatest feeling? Landing...landing is the greatest feeling you can have.
Yes, 'we' (USA - woo!) are the ones with the 'smart' weapons. This is my point. For all those who have been trying to figure out a way to resolve their regional (armed) conflicts regionally (and not peacefully), here's something to work on. 'They' don't have the disadvantage being discussed here. 'Their' portable surface-to-air missile launchers are not remotely managed.
Back to your first point, now that we've laid some groundwork. The US / NATO have the 'smart' weapons. Fine. So what? Cheers to all those who don't. Now those on the receiving end can get out their commercially available toys and do their best to switch the friendly/foe signifiers or whatnot and have the F-18's attacking them suddenly abort their missions, due to Jet_1's missiles heading suddenly and inexplicably (at the moment) towards Jet_2.
One hope for where this could go, if the beloved Pentagon can't close those security holes - and they begin to be exploited?
Maybe we could get some real diplomacy.
Probably not.
[|]
C. one could trick the Friend Or Foe signal data so that friendlies appear to be hostiles.
If that's not useful on a military level, I don't know what. You wouldn't even need any artillery if you could have your enemy's 'smart' weapons chase them home...
[|]
It seems that it should be fairly obvious that if you don't provide a remote-control interface or connedction, you can't remote control the system. Heck even my loghost has the transmit pin on the NIC cut, which makes it pretty secure.
but Taiwan is in a defense contract with America. They get invaded by China over Uncle Sam's Dead Body...
I'm willing to consider the possibility that the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was a hack, but what most slashdotters again seem not to care about is the fact that US CIA was heavily underbudgeted [sp] in terms of Ground Human Intelligence. Hence no one noticed years-outdated maps. The intended target was missed by a few blocks. After the fact, the possibility was raised that the Chinese journalists were spying on NATO, but again, since so few slashdotters care about NATO nations, I guess that's not an issue either.
I'll shut up now...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
US Army going IPO : initial public offer at 9.99
You can't handle the truth.
He never doubted orders because they came from a "hack-proof", trusted source.
Not to mention every spy/thriller story where someone high-up in the military system takes matters into his/her own hands.
I mean, if the CIA awards medals to ppl they fired for lying to congress -- there IS a question of who's in charge, right?
These "Army Officials" should start thinking closed-circuit computer aided human interfaces and quit thinking that everything can be controlled via remote-control.. ..damned couch-potatoes...
In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles has the opportunity to hack into a boarding party's remote-control armor. Among other things, he sets one soldier's... uhh... sanitary system to backwash. :-) He keeps everything subtle as long as possible, so they don't figure out what's going on and switch to manual control....
The concept that security breaches such as those that would be possible like this hinges on the assumption that our systems are still mostly secure because if would be extremely difficult to properly generate false data in the form of the authentic. This breaks down completely if someone steals the right spec-sheet or source code. What they need for anything with wireless access is to put it on its own network. Something that doesn't even run on TCP/IP. Security through obscurity is flawed, but a lack of access of any kind is a very valid security paradigm. Of course, extremely high grade encryption, along with frequency-hopping, and other methods must also be used. Basically, they need a network that is designed such that there is no computer on it that is also connected to the internet. Not even having a wire that could connect to the internet. When lives are on the line, you need more than just a code solution, you need something physical. I personally wouldn't consider it safe until the most feasible method of "hacking" these systems is to use the time-honored method of paying off the disgruntled employees.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
(but the loser script kiddies didn't know what they had done!)
I have to admit that I find the military's concern that their machines will be hacked legitimate but suggest that they shouldn't be as worried as they are. Why? I offer this true parable of a hack that happened to me.
My Robotics lab happened to have just bought a couple of very nice Linux-Based mobile robot platforms (Nomadic Technologies Super Scout II) and, without much mind to security, my advisor hooked them up to the net for development and testing.
It's worth noting that these little guys had actuated wheels as well as top-of-the-line CTD cameras and video cards, wireless ethernet, the whole kit 'n' kaboodle. One even had a robotic arm.
Lo and behold, 3 months later, during a security sweep caused by a root comprimise on the department's server, I discovered that the two little robots had been hacked into by script kiddies. Of course, all they were doing was running BitchX and eggdrop, without a mind towards where the hacked computers were, or what the were inside of.
If only! If they had just done a bit o' exploring they would have realized the potential of the system they had hacked! The could've rolled the things around the deparment at night, snapped pictures, opened elevator doors, caused all kinds of mischief.
My guess is that there are scores of hacked robots sitting in labs all around the world, each one of them running BitchX and eggdrop, but few (if any) in danger of being commandeered by the clueless script kidz that hacked them.
Spyce Boyee fer life,
Father Harry
It's not an issue as far as weapon systems go. But what about the plane itself? The plane contains how much fuel, flies how fast, and has how much mass? I imagine an F-14 hijacked and sent into the bridge of a carrier would be BAD.
And if you know enough to talk about what you talked about, you also know enough to know that what I suggest can happen. And you also ought to know that it isn't all encrypted.
The military is really way, way behind the times.
Why would we bomb Taiwan? US: Muhahahaha! Now we own the entire market on child labor and crappy party favors! The USA is the most prosperous nation in the world. If we really want to fuck up a country, we just declare economic warfare on them and turn their economy into a quivering pile of Jello
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Imagine what could happen if crackers organized and planted programs on computers similar to the DOS attacks recently. Then activated them remotely, silmultaneously, sending tanks and ships helterskelter.
Then again if they use Windows, what happens if the Pentagon decides to cut corners and not pay the latest and greatest license fees to M$. M$ could remotely shut down all the tanks and planes, rendering them useless!
Then there all those bugs, imagine having to stop during battle to install the latest patch and reboot the tank! How many crashes during battle are acceptable? Could give new meaning to Blue Screen Of Death!
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Your prose style blows. You have a third-grader's grasp of grammar and syntax. Sorry, writing in all lowercase was done, _once_ by e.e. cummings. Doing it again means you're an unoriginal loser.
Let's look at a key sample of your awful style:
"all are executed with head shots that rip apart their meager brains and cause them to crumple into convulsing heaps lying in puddles of their own blood". Look at how hard you're trying to bring the scene to life by impressing your reader with your command of adjectives and adverbs. But you kill the line by shoving so many words into it. Ten words would have done it. After ten words into _that_ sentence, I already knew everything I needed to about it, and I skipped the rest.
Your story values are horrid. I don't mean that your subject matter is repulsive -- that's obvious. But you have no grasp of pacing or setting. You might as well begin with "It was a dark and stormy night" for all the finesse you show. Reading this tripe was like being beaten by a four-year-old with a foam rubber hammer -- it was supposed to hurt, but instead it just got on my nerves.
Do yourself a favor -- don't give up your day job. And do us all a favor, and find some other outlet for your cheesy, melodramatic crap.
Ok here is the situation. We are at war with, lets say india for some reason. They have landed men on our California coast and we are sending troops and tanks and shit after them. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CONTROL A FEW OF THE TANKS AND HAVE THEM START BLOWING UP OUR OWN TROOPS? Hey, were being invaded, lets go ahead and destroy our own troops so we cant defend and we all die! YAY!!!!!!! The only other time would be peacetime, and the worst harm would be them still killing our own troops, or pissing off other countries by killing theirs. Either way the person doing the hacking would get caught probalbly.
piku
I can't believe the Government would let their remote controlled vehicle system be hooked up to the internet. Dont they realize that if the computers used to do this remote controlling werent hooked up in any way to the internet or a system that is hooked up to the internet there would be no way to hack into the system. Ive never heard of a hacker hacking through air to your computer...
piku
Interesting article, but these methods of misleading an enemy have been around more or less forever. Several electronic means of disrupting enemy communications include "meaconing"- broadcasting or re-transmitting navigational signals; "intrusion"- transmitting false orders or commands to units; and "jamming"- overpowering the enemy transmitter to prevent communication. All of the services are aware of the possibility, and regularly train to deal with them. Doing it over the internet is a new door to an old trick, but it will never cause more than temporary confusion, and that probably not more than once.
"Never pet a burning dog."
Actually, Lockheed Martin (or whatever they're called this week) does the subs. And the off-the-shelf products are usually the only ones that work. The rest is 70's crud that never worked right in the first place, and is lumbering under 10-plus years of "improvements". I do heartily agree with your last statement, they just can't attract quality personnel. But, it may be that the right kind of people aren't available. Being stuck in the muck while trying to do a difficult and detailed taks is not for most teen hackers.
"Never pet a burning dog."
You just need hardware at the other end which doesn't require a link beat to send data out the port. Many cheap hubs do the trick. Heck, early ethernet NICs did not even implement link.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Uuh... if people from the same country were cracking Military code, u'd probably get arrested. Other countries has been spying on us already.
------------ I like trance music.
Security, although always been a issue, has now become a main stream problem. There are many security "firms" out there to attempt to secure whatever devices are being used. Although you would think the military would have taken care of this? If i ever hear of anything involving a computer "hacker" infiltrating the US Armies military equipment, the next time you'll see me will be in Zimbabwe. "A system is only as secure as the one who secures it" HB "and theres always someone who can secure better" me
Given the development cycle of ground combat vehicles, the danger of "hackers" having any impact of operations is less of a possibility than a general lack of hostilities drying up the money for bullets (or new mil-tech). The bulk of fielded M1's are M1-A1HC's or worse, and lack anything that wasn't "infiltratable" with meaconing, intrusion and jamming since Vietnam. It would be nice if CNN would contrast feature press releases with reports about military families on food stamps but the cycle of re-enforcing necessary fictions of tech remains king.
Out sourcing this, companies and or contries will hire people and or contries to do this for them. It wont matter who you are at war with, even if you are engaged in battle, because you will be able to hire others to take over the military weapons and this will create some very rich countries that only exist in cyberspace, they will be the equivelent of ? nobody knows. This is an example of a shallow minded expert who has his head up his ass. Reality is open source will rule and those who know it best will be god. I just love experts. John Pike, a defense and intelligence analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, said that although there are well-known security gaps in the commercial systems that the Army plans to use on the battlefield, hacking into tanks and other weapons may prove to be too difficult for an enemy engaged in battle.
Got 80,000 feet of wire hanging off the back of that F-117?
Actually a sit-in virtual station that relays the aircraft's environment back to you and makes you feel like you're there *is* a good idea. Besides protecting the pilot's life, the pilot can also do 20G air maneuvers that would kill a human being (9Gs max). The fighter plane could be used to maximum efficiency (unlike now) where the human is the limiting performance factor.
So I'm sitting at home the other day, flying an stealth...when the FBI comes knocking at my door...so I answer (first stupid move) and they say, so we hear you have a stealth bomber under your control...I say and....you like your house...so they left...came back with a buch of ATF agents...saying something about what I was doing wrong...they didn't like my comment about who's tax dollars paid for this...jerks
I like the bit in Hacker Crackdown about a h/cracker with the exaggerated reputation of being able to launch WWIII from a pay fone.... :)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Gee... just think what could have happened if the nutty little gamers behind the Columbine atrocity had gotten their hands on some *serious* weapontry.
Seems to me that it's the big boys in office playing their video games that might be the *real* threat in the years to come...
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
The military needs more money to shoot people with. The reason this crap is being addressed now is because the military is moving into a generation of unmanned vehicles as many have already pointed out. They're also making soldiers increasingly electronic from night vision to GPS systems. If someone can hack (crack) into an army's eletronic (C4 infrastructure) they can control the army. I see the "21st century soldier" stuff and just laugh. Instead of making soldiers more independant technology makes them more dependant on a base of operations. The digital soldier's effectiveness only lasts as long as his (her) battery. Eletronic toys will also have to be heavily protected from the environment which adds to their weight and bulkiness. After a while soldiers will be entirely dependant on technology for mobility and survival in the field. Want to cripple a ground unit? Fly over them with bombers releasing lightweight radio reflective chaff with small amounts of radio static causing isotopes. A cheap and easy way to keep your enemies from phoning home. Want to get more complex? Arm your army with a bunch of HERF guns and lay waste to your electronic opponents. The US military's vision of fighting in the future is fundamentally flawed, radio reflective chaff and HERF guns are cheap, with a little bit of cash and know-how you can build some low yield nuclear bombs. You don't use them to obliderate cities, you shoot them up into the ionosphere and detonate them to create one whammy of an EMP. Keep IT Simple Stupid.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Speaking of PC Anywhere, I got the funniest thing in the mail the other day. It was a typical "Free ISP for newbies" CD, with a long list of included software (mostly demos) on the back. The first item on the list, in bold type, was... PC Anywhere. It struck me that distributing such a widely-known vulnerability to the typical audience of this sort of CD is, well, a little reckless.
Hmmm... I guess it was funnier at the time. Oh well.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Can one do arbitrary remote control via that interface? (i.e. any maneouver I want?) First thing after I hijack the control connection, could I pull one of those 20G moves someone mentioned earlier, killing the pilot to prevent him from shutting down?
How about killing the VTOL engines, and dropping the plane on the deck? Perhaps with the bombs armed?
1. GPS creep might work. Sounds like that Bond movie, though, eh? I'm guessing that might be harder than we think, just because you'd have to trick the receiver into hearing your signal while ignoring the actual signal. A system such as GPS has to have some way of throwing out erroneous data (or admitting that it can't determine a valid result). Now if you knock the satellites out of orbit first, you've got it, but then the all around lack of GPS except when you're spoofing would probably be noticed.
2. Fake AWACS might be possible if stuff was transmitted unencrypted over non-voice channels. Which sounds unlikely. I think open voice communications is already vulnerable, and non-voice is likely going to be encrypted (there's a real-time encryption system from the NSA, although I forget the name, that's used for voice, surely you could throw it into a cell modem...)
3. FOF tomfoolery might be possible. Although the other way around, making foes seem friendly, makes more sense. The FOF is a radar transponder system that essentially fiddles with the bounced signal, I'd think in order to change it you'd need physical access to the transponder.
What it sounds like they are looking at is large systems - computers that provide navigation and systems control for planes and boats, like fly-by-wire. Of course, it does make one wonder what the hell the military would be thinking allowing remote access or control of said computers. I mean, really... I don't know, I think it might be mis-information, getting the "bad guys" (whoever they are this week)to waste time looking at something that is irrelevant.
itachi
Well ...
OK, so the example they give is faking the incoming navigation data for a ship. For vessels which depend on downloads of info (such as GPS locators), this might prove useful in that:
A. one could induce systems creep in a MBT so that the tank thinks it's a few hundred feet away from where it is, especially while on the move. "Charlie, I thought you said we were going 70kph, how come we're 20km closer than we should be?"
B. one could give false image info for targets beyond local range (e.g. fake data from an AWACS).
C. one could trick the Friend Or Foe signal data so that friendlies appear to be hostiles.
None of these sound very promising. And none of them "take control" of the system. Now if someone knows of any buffer overflow exploits with these systems, maybe we're talking a nifty hack; but otherwise, it's just smoke and mirrors.
Will in Seattle
Maybe OT but anyway:
A 16 year old Danish boy managed for some hours to control the trains on a major switchyard using only knowledge of the switching system and a stolen radio from the train operator.
He got caught when he by mistake changed the switches so that a high speed passenger train would be led onto the switchyard ! (The Automatic Train Control system set off the alarms)
The boy is in all respects an ordinary and clever boy with a huge interest for trains and how to operate them. In other words - he is by no means nuts.
Never the less he could have caused a disaster if the passenger train was so close that the ATC couldn't stop the train fast enough.
Security is alway an issue with humans!
-- From Denmark
What is stopping the commander in chief from ordering the big toys out to play?
What is stopping anyone from going to the armory and grabbing the big toys?
What is stopping the boy with the toy from pointing it at his buddies, rather than downrange?
What is stopping the makers of the toys from planting 'software bugs'?
The only reason anyone is caring here is digital is seen as invisible...hard to track.
The US Military has wanted smarter toys so they can use lesser trained people. The 'threat' expressed in the article is part of the trade off they accepted when they signed the contract.
Perhaps the military contractors need more money?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Taking control of a ship carrying cruise missiles now qualifies as "random harassment".
I'm gonna get me a script and randomly harass my old High School.
--
Mike Hoye
someone mentioned that "you'd need to have worked with this stuff to hack it"
time and time again this has been shown to be blatantly false. People that design systems are not clairvoyant. Interested parties can and do infiltrate and learn about systems that they've never seen before. Reading old phrack articles should leave you quite convinced of this.
Unmanned military vehicles are no longer an experiment. They are a reality. They were used successfully in the gulf war - in reconassiance roles. However, more traditional aircraft and military systems roles are also being moved to unmanned versions. It is my understanding that the JFX (or is it JSF or JSX ?) is the last planned manned fighter aircraft. Well, this summer they had mated the two halves fo the fuselage. In other words, don't expect too many more manned fighters. Fighter aircraft can already far outperform the limits of their frail human pilots.
The military is and will continue to use unmanned vehciles in an increasingly aggressive/active fashion. Many current generation missiles are "fire and forget" -- this is software driving the missle to the target once it is released. Commercial airliners already more or less fly themselves. Putting all these peices together is all thats left.
Someone else mentioned that taking a machine off a public network insured that it would not be hacked. I can't think of a more foolish statement. Systems were getting hacked -- and much more thoroughly than they are today -- long before everyone "had internet". The mentality which says "private network == unhackable" is the mentality that I don't want near _Any_ computer network with sensitive data. VPN's are just a matter of encryption. Isolated LANs invariably have some private dial-in #. Think of this problem in terms of telco stuff. What telco gear do you know of thats hooked up to the net ? Ask yourself how often that stuff gets completely compromised and understood by cajoling teens.
As far as buffer overruns in military systems, I wouldn't count on it. For instance, the majority of the F-15s software is written in Ada. C typically is _not_ used, and for good reasons.
The facts are clear. The future of the military is software automation. If people take the attitude that they are doing enough to safeguard their software and networks, then they probably really aren't. Paranoia is the only answer.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Any information we considered VITAL we do NOT put on a network where any non military personnel can access it.. We have special networks for that kind of stuff, and I can guarantee that the ability to control a TANK will NOT be on Niprnet (what we call the internet)...
All of our special networks are of course, QUITE encrypted, so good luck if you think you have a chance cracking them...
-Dextius Alphaeus
-- Java is not a Jedi trait... "do, or do not, there is no try" --
...but i just don't buy this at all. Why, if the Army really thinks this could happen, would they advertise it? "Hey, you too can get control of our tanks! Commandeer a APC and take your friends to the Prom in real All-American (tm) style!!!
It could just be more of the government's "cyber-criminal/terrorist" rhetoric aimed at eroding more people's right to hack. Well, not that there is a right to hack....yet.
Am I just crazy? Am I placing to little faith in our military? Can you place too little faith in an organization that practices better ways to kill people?
sig not found
Another thing I think worth mentioning:
I've seen a lot of posts that talk about the fact that the military wouldn't talk about it if they did have tanks and such hooked up to the internet. This is probably true for the most part. See most squadrons, wings(in the AF, for the Army it's probably battalions, companys etc.) have this neat guy called the PR officer. Basically any public statements or talking to the press is done/authorized by him/her. There are often things that are initially classified info, then de-classified, but aren't released to the press. No officer/enlisted personel are going to say a word, unless the PR gives it the okay. That's the cool thing. If the PR person doesn't say anything about it, no one outside the military would ever know. I've been fortunate enough to hear some 'confidential information not released to CNN' breifings. They were interesting to say the least. I once even heard about a hack that accomplished the next best thing to taking over a vehicle.
Wigs
...I was reading this and realized, "Hey, that's ME he's talking about."
Yes...I am a civilian working for the Navy. (I feel like I'm at Defense Contractor's Anonymous...) In fact, I'm with a group of folks responsible for writing the software that is the official NATO test for military communications equipment.
[aside] Do you have any idea what the NDA for this company looks like? How many NDAs did you sign that said, "If you talk about the wrong things to the wrong people, or even to the right people at the wrong time, or even to the right people, at the right time, but in the wrong place, OR EVEN the right people at the right time at the right place but when that other person didn't Need To Know the information, we'll throw you behind bars with your new "husband" for the next 10 to 15 years!"??? *sigh*)
Well, anyhow, what I can talk about and is unclassified is that most of the military communications formats are encrypted, jamproof and in many ways just really dang hard to deal with. There are two exceptions. One of them is used to control airplanes remotely (usually for Automatic Takeoff and Landing, for carriers). It's not encrypted. Granted, the format of these communications isn't something the average joe can get a hold of easily. And there's probably a way for a pilot to shut down the communications.
But the unencrypted nature of this, not to mention the fact that it can be used to control a plane, handled cleverly, could be a risk. It's like the risk in Star Wars..."I've analzyed their attack, sir, and there IS a danger..."
Hmmm, I seem to have wandered off the point of the post I'm responding to...I know I had something relevant to this post to say...oh yeah, it was this: Even the civilians are underfunded. You'd be amazed at the crap our team here has to dig through. Our solution is that we're always having to reuse old code, rather than hacking an off-the-shelf product. But if you've been on a project where you've tried to reuse code and merely update a system over time, you know how nasty things can get...well, we've been updating the same code pretty much since...1993 or so. Seven years makes code fugly.
Okay, I'm going to stop now.
Trouble is they weren't well EMC shielded. So along comes the hacker, with an illegally powerful ham radio.
He gets halfway through filling and: ZAP! - with luck, the pump will stop registering anymore fuel.
Before you rush out to try it, it doesn't work very well anymore. The shielding is much better.
Sure this isn't a software hack, but if it puts a military vehicle out of action it doesn't really matter. Also, theoretically it might in fact be possible to reprogram something remotely (even if the wires to do it have been cut, if you put the right voltages on it, its going to work ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I agree with an earlier poster that if you don't want the ability for people to do it remotely, don't put it in there in the first place. This can't be done in all circumstances, of course, but read on.
I hope to God that the arming circuitry requires some kind of hardwire interface at least for the last stage of final go-ahead for launch.
I would have though that with military tech. being, what, 5 years or more in advance of what we civilians get they would be using multiple signal, spread spectrum, 2GB encryption keys and a slew of other technologies that make it at least infeasable to try and crack. And yes I do mean for navigation and indeed all subsystems of any kind of military device or even civillian device which has the possibility for far-reaching or deadly effects if such a system were to be compromised.
<sigh> I guess that's what they mean by "military intelligence".
I've been playing Janes Lonbow a lot lately ;-)
"The problem for the enemy is that computer security vulnerabilities will almost certainly prove fleeting and unpredictable," said Pike, adding that such tactics would be nearly impossible to employ beyond the random harassment level.
Most security problems that I know of are not fleeting, but are resident in the system. So you have a systematic bug in stead of a fleeting and unpredictable. This problem is real and might be a problem, but that is not what i think is meant here.
So I think that we shouldn't look at the error inside the systems to look at what mister Pike meant. I think that what mister Pike was aiming at is the problem of being able to send a vehicle the wrong data. For that you don't need to access the vehicles systems. You just need to be able to send fake data in such a way that your opponent interprets it as real. Deception in the end is a large part of Warfare.
Use Adsense for Charity
we were military intel. (please hold the jokes), and the equiment we worked on was *almost* a stand alone network, small server that had a single encrypted data feed from outside.
the machines were brand new(we were some of the first trained to use them), but were already antiquated. the contractors spent more time working on them than us analysts. and there were so many holes in the gui that it wasnt funny.
even we, uneducated and unexperienced as we were with unix, were able to find several ways to do interesting stuff. its been too long to tell you the version of solaris running, but was a custom gui, with no command line for non-contractors. somehow, we found that it was easy to create a file with a few commands in it, save as .cshrc, and open a couple windows to execute it... and it didnt take us long to get transferred to another unit.
the point we were trying to make though, is before we got into trouble, we told the contractor what we could do, we reported everything we did to see if he could stop us. and he could never get the authorization. he tried a few things on his own, but we always found ways to circumvent them.
now, we query you, what if we had been malicious? or, for that matter, anything other than curious? we never broke anything, and only got root once (did nothing with it, but let the contractor know). granted we were right there, and that makes a difference, but there are many out there whom are much better than we (though we are still learning - not cracking, losing our job was enough to teach us a lesson), and many systems are not so remote.
just a thought.
Where hast Great OOG gone?
OK, I can only speak with regards to a fighter aircraft here, but I would guess most everything else will be similar. (knowing how uncle sam operates ...)
I hope to God that the arming circuitry requires some kind of hardwire interface at least for the last stage of final go-ahead for launch.
Hell yes!!! I work SMS (stores mgmt system) right now. This is what we do. In order to launch a missile or drop a bomb, the master are switch is required by the hardware to be in the armed position and the weapon release is required by the hardware to be depressed. If either of those interlocks (and a whole mess of software interlocks and other software/hardware interlocks) aren't OK, the missile never comes of the rail. (or isn't ejected)
I would have though that with military tech. being, what, 5 years or more in advance of what we civilians get they would be using multiple signal, spread spectrum, 2GB encryption keys and a slew of other technologies that make it at least infeasable to try and crack. And yes I do mean for navigation and indeed all subsystems of any kind of military device or even civillian device which has the possibility for far-reaching or deadly effects if such a system were to be compromised.
The keys aren't THAT big (on the stuff I know about, which isn't all that much since I'm not with the NAV team) but freaking EVERYTHING is encrypted. The JTIDS shared tactical info, the comms, the datalink to your wingman, nav, gps, etc. And yes most of it is spread spectrum. There is a bunch of anti-spoof stuff built into a lot of it as well.
Basically some cracker hijacking a manned combat vehicle will not happen. Ever. Period. Even if someone got around 1 layer of crypto, they would have more to deal with other stuff. (like the fact that these systems are unbelievably complex, and use some pretty strange hardware.)
The issue is the new UCAVs. (unmannded combat air vehicles) These could be hijacked somehow if the crypto on the link was broken. These are not gonna be deployed for quite some time, and I'm sure the link encryption will be heavy duty. (I would guess to the point of requiring dedicated proprietary hardware on both ends. that's just a guess based on past experience however.)
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
You will find, that for most "sensitive and mission critical" operations (that does cover a lot with the military, but not most of their PC LANs), they use the tried-and-true "air gap" firewall: They simply don't connect the internal systems to any external systems. You can't attack what you can't talk to.
Now, the Navy seems to be having trouble with their "smart" ships, but so far, their track record there isn't too hot (remember the whole NT debacle?). That whole program seems to be more like some Star Trek fan's wet dream then your "standard", ultra-paranoid military project. I can only hope it is the exception and not the rule.
You will find the military is very strict with regards to what you connect to what, how you can connect it, and how you have to protect it and shield it. And with good reason.
If you've got a PC with classified data on it, then the entire system is classified. Including the keyboard and monitor. (No, I'm not making that up. I've seen many Air Force PCs with red "SECRET" stickers on the keyboard and monitor.)
If you so much as put a floppy disk in the drive and take it back out, that floppy is now classified as well. You also cannot connect just any hardware to the system; you need to make sure everything is properly shielded for EMSEC (emissions security; what used to be called TEMPEST). This applies all the way down to serial cables connecting to external SDDs (Secure Data Devices).
I'm fairly confident this article is pointing out exceptions in design policy to ensure that the exceptions do not become the norm.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It is somewhat particularly troubling indeed. The US Military as a whole is farming most of their computer programming out to civillian contractors these days. For example, I believe the Navy has most of the software for their ballistic missle submarines done by GTE. (These are the same folks that use NT4.0 for navigation and damage control routines on Aegis missle cruisers, which have failed more than once, leaving a billion dollar vessle dead in the water)
As opposed to the USAF, which just barely does most of their work in house.
At anyrate, talk to a military programmer, and they'll admitt that quality control can be iffy, budgets are short, and the Brass is always looking for a way to trim budgets. Even if it means going with an off the shelf product, hacked and crammed into working by only one or two enlisted men, who leave a few months later for higher paying civillian jobs.
And now the Military is looking at things like fully autonomous combat vehicles. The next US Army MainBattleTank, in later versions will operate autonomously, Both the Navy and Airforce hope to fly UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicles) that for a large part operate autonomously, if not fully.
Hackability of these systems may not be practical, many of them will operate without external data connections, being solid systems.
What is my concern more than anything, is that these systems need their software to perform at all, and the trend at cutting corners, and having a shrinking qualified personnell base, is what the Military is really in danger of.
Sounds like the military wants to be able to blame someone when they attack unprovoked.
Taiwan: Why did you attack us!!!
US: Wasn't us, someone must have hacked into our computers and done it.
Later that day
US: *snicker* fools