Meshnet Digital Armor To Protect Tanks

An anonymous reader writes "General Dynamics Canada and Secure Computing have partnered to develop Meshnet, a hardware/software firewall designed to protect networks and digital devices inside tanks and other military vehicles from hostile computer and virus attacks. Without adequate protection a tech savvy enemy can infiltrate networks, manipulate information, and deny crews the data they need to participate in modern warfare. Exactly such an event happened last year to an Israeli crew, when hackers from Hezbollah eavesdropped on their communications. 'The system uses Secure Computing's off-the-shelf Sidewinder Security Appliance ... Sidewinder consolidates all major Internet security functions into a single system, providing "best-of-breed" antivirus and spyware network protection "against all types of threats, both known and unknown," according to Secure Computing.'"

Comments

Re:Why?

[eobanb]

Well, that's not entirely true. For example: 2.4 GHz, which is an ISM band in the United States, is used by the French military in France. Therefore, a number of common electronics, like cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, 802.11, etc., have faced problems with the government banning their use; over time, industry groups have been able to cut through the red tape, but both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi was not allowed in France for several years after it was already in wide use in other countries.

Re:Sanity check:

[dwillden]

Absolutely it's odd, since Hezbollah wasn't really able to listen in on the Israeli radio's, they just used Direction Finding to locate where the Israelies were broadcasting from, and used that to plot where the Israelies were and where they were going.
There was no great security hack, just monitoring and DF'ing the encrypted radio traffic. I don't need to know what is actually said. If I can track the enemies location by simple DF'ing of their communications, I can quickly locate them and then track their movements. And when that indicates that a large number of radio's are moving up the valley towards my position, I know to be ready to attack, defend or run.