Slashdot Mirror
Trojan Kill Switches In Military Technology
Nrbelex writes "The New York Times reports in this week's Science section that hardware and software trojan kill switches in military devices are an increasing concern, and may have already been used. 'A 2007 Israeli Air Force attack on a suspected, partly-constructed Syrian nuclear reactor led to speculation about why the Syrian air defense system did not respond to the Israeli aircraft. Accounts of the event initially indicated that sophisticated jamming technology was used to blind the radars. Last December, however, a report in an American technical publication, IEEE Spectrum, cited a European industry source in raising the possibility that the Israelis might have used a built-in kill switch to shut down the radars. Separately, an American semiconductor industry executive said in an interview that he had direct knowledge of the operation and that the technology for disabling the radars was supplied by Americans to the Israeli electronic intelligence agency, Unit 8200.'"
4chan is not your personal army...
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Perhaps you're referring to the French-made Exocet missiles, launched from the Argentine Super Etendard planes? The 20 dead sailors on HMS Sheffield, sunk by an Exocet, would disagree.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Wait! I retract my earlier assertion.
According to this article (cited elsewhere in this thread by acb) about French President Mitterand, PM Thatcher successfully pressured the French to reveal the "codes to make the Exocets deaf and blind" after the Sheffield was sunk.
Very interesting.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Except that there is no evidence that any explosion took place. The whole story is based on the book of a former Reagan administration official. Go ahead and check newspaper archives at at that time, and you will find no mention of any explosion. I suppose you could claim it was covered up by the Soviets, but if it was truly a "massive" explosion, I doubt they could have achieved a complete media blackout.
In addition, the entire story is described as a hoax here:
http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/computer_hoaxes.php
I think it's fair to say The Great Trans-Siberian Pipeline Computer Sabotage of 1982 is dubious at best.