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Cracking Military Devices

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the breaking-the-law-breaking-the-law dept.

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.

2 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Hacked Military Hardware by bailpossum · · Score: 5

    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.

  2. sounds like a cover up by adpowers · · Score: 5

    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