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Hacking Nuclear Command and Control

Posted by samzenpus on from the why-haven't-you-radioed-the-plans-countermanding-the-go-code dept.

The Walking Dude writes "The International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) has released an unclassified report exploring the possibility of cyber terrorists launching nuclear weapons. Ominous exploits include unreliable early warning sensors, unsecure nuclear weapons storage, transportation blunders, breaches in the chain of command, and the use of Windows on nuclear submarines. A traditional large-scale terrorist attack, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, could be combined with computer network operations in an attempt to start a nuclear war. Amidst the confusion of the traditional attack, communications could be disrupted, false declarations of war could be issued on both sides, and early warning sensors could be spoofed. Adding to this is the short time frame in which a retaliatory nuclear response must be decided upon, in some cases as little as 15 minutes. The amount of firepower that could be unleashed in these 15 minutes would be equivalent to approximately 100,000 Hiroshima bombs."

1 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Windows on submarines? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    at least the submarine is generally a stand-alone network

    My next-door neighbour, a middle-ranking officer on the UK's Vanguard fleet of nuclear submarines, asked me to fix his laptop ready for the recent 3-month wargame off Florida. Naturally, the "fix" was as simple as identify trojan, format, re-install MS-Windows, install Avast, advise him not to run keygens he'd randomly downloaded off a torrent, and slip an Ubuntu live CD into the laptop bag in the hope it'd pique his interest.

    As I returned it to him, I said "I turned WiFi and Bluetooth off by default. I assume you'd get in trouble if your stealth-sub got spotted by something as simple as your opponent searching for available networks."

    Apparently he'd never thought of that. And regaled me with stories of how long undersea voyages are just one huge wireless LAN party and movie fileswap meet. And asked me to turn WiFi and BT back on.

    Nuclear subs are just one huge Faraday cage, right? Right? No really, they are... aren't they?