Hacking Nuclear Command and Control

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."

Comments

IRL

[hellfish006]

"...and the use of Windows on nuclear submarines" Talk about your Blue Screen of Death

Re:Windows on submarines?

[Cur8or]

Maybe, but "The hunt for Redhat October" would be a bitching movie.

Re:Windows on submarines?

[nicc777]

Especially if you open one...

Re:People in the know

[maxwell demon]

The unabomber wasn't rational but fortunately he was a mathematician

An irrational matematician may sound like an oxymoron, but really, there are uncountably many of them. Rational matematicians are the exception, and even they are dense. :-)

Navy nets are segregated

[BobMcD]

From personal experience I can say that 'Windows on a submarine' really isn't an issue. The Navy uses at LEAST three independent networks on their ships. Two that I was told about and one that I wasn't supposed to notice on my own. These aren't connected together, and only one of them connects to the outside world. Even if they were running a completely un-patched version of Windows 3.11 on that inner-most network, they're still as secure as they need to be.

In the case of the Navy's most important systems, they're not secured via copper but instead by steel-jacketed lead.

Re:Windows on submarines?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

This could be even Worse

[koolfy]

Sub Commander: "Enemy vessel has locked on and fired anti-sub missile. Impact in 10 seconds.
Impact in 9 seconds.
Impact in 8 seconds.
Impact in 7 seconds.
Impact in 12 seconds.
Impact in 2 seconds.
Impact in 1 seconds.
Impact in about an hour.
Impact in 4 minutes.

-- BOOM

Finished copying 2MegaTons file "Missile.snk" from "Vessel" to "Your Ass".

Thanks for using MIcrosoft Windows Vista.