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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.'"
Its a good thing the DoD is taking a stronger, more positive stance towards open source software. I guess the next logical step would be open source hardware.
That's what you get for not building the hardware yourself. We on the other hand have been intelligent enough not to outsource our industries to foreign countr... Doh.
(ring)
Hello. Syrian Air Defence.
Hello, Mr. Air Defence. My name is Raji - I mean Bob - from technical support. I have a service request you made on your Acme 2001 Target Tracking Module.
What? We are not having problem with that -
Now, now. I have to clear this ticket, Mr. Air Defence. You wouldn't want me to get into trouble, would you?
Well, no, I guess not.
Ah. Good then. Please reboot your system and we can get started solving your problem.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Dont buy important technology from foreign countries, do it yourself. Especially if you ever under any way, shape or form could cross paths with said foreign country.
I think this should be a really big wakeup call to european countries that relies 100% on american tech, both on hardware and software.
HTTP/1.1 400
You get what you deserve when you outsource...
Seriously, I understand the cost benefits of going with the lowest quote and all but sometimes it's best to keep things "in house" to ensure quality and accountability. And that applies to companies all the way up to governments. In this case, when dealing with national defense, it especially applies to governments...
Thatcher probably just killed them with an especially icy stare...
Seriously, if you are going to wage war, it is a very bad idea to buy non trivial weapons systems from your enemy or his allies. Actually it's a bad idea to buy it from anyone that is not 100% on your side. Best would be to build it yourself.
Those amateur war mongering folks down there. Still don't think that anyone is learning out of it, I mean, where are the chips for NATO equipment come from? Oh yea, who manufactures them cheapest. How does this make sense in the context?
Does that mean that the U.S. provided *Syria* with sensitive military hardware (ok.. with built-in kill switches) ?
If they didn't then it's not a kill switch and the U.S. simply provided their Israeli allies with electronic warfare technologies.
It was my understanding that syrian military hardware was russian based anyway..
So I'm not sure I understand the whole thing..
--Ivan
My PC for sure has a kill switch somewhere. Now and then an odd blue screen with a funny message appears on the screen. I wonder who is operating the switch and why...
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.
Are you referring to the french made Exocet missiles that sank the type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield causing 44 casaulties, whereof 20 were fatal?
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Given that the Argentinians didn't actually have any launchers for the Exocets in the first place, it's a bloody miracle any got launched at all. There's no mention of a kill switch anywhere that I can find, and given that they launched all four they had, and all but one are accounted for, the kill switch story sounds unlikely.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
I'm not usually a fan of conspiracy theories, but "signals to turn off radar" seems more like a coverup to protect the Mossad agents who really turned off the radar. You can theoretically only use a kill signal like that once, but Mossad agents are much more versatile.
So there's a semiconductor executive that is talking about classified information in an interview? His/Her clearance should be revoked, at least temporarily, until an investigation can be performed to determine whether any laws were broken, and how long the executive should serve.
In the cold war the united states did this several times to the USSR, one notable example was a gas pipeline explosion caused by a specifically sabotaged piece of software.
Here is an article detailing the event;
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39147917,00.htm
The USSR attempted in several instances to steal or otherwise acquire technology from the united states, and whenever this was detected our counter-intelligence services would provide flawed or otherwise sabotaged technology in place of the actual information sought. This had the desired cascading effect of the USSR unable to trust any technology that may have been introduced from non-USSR sources and was considered an extremely significant part of the eventual collapse of the USSR.
bend like the reed
I understand why the Chinese don't want to use Windows in their defense systems. I am sure there are back doors to encryption, and remote access, and all kinds of sneaky things that the CIA can do to anyone using Microsoft products.
Microsoft can say , no, its fine. Without the source code, how could you trust them?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
IEEE Spectrum properly refers to the attack on the Syrian hardware as a "back door". The New York Times not only failed to use the Hacker's Dictionary, it failed to use the terminology from IEEE Spectrum, which it even hyperlinked to.
Turning off your enemies defenses is one thing, but what about when stuff like this is used to make the enemy seem to be on the offensive?
A kill switch needs external communication to be activated which can be quite impossible to implement in many case but radars are basically radio receivers so a specific sequence of radio impulsion at a given frequency could activate the kill switch..
Interesting.
My understanding is that they took out the NETWORK and COMPUTERS connecting all the weaponry, not the weaponry. So while the guys in the missile batteries were playing cards, or whatever, the search radar was showing cartoons, and nobody ever woke the general up with an attack warning until the bombs dropped. Lieutenants do not shoot missiles unless the general says it is OK.
most of the exocets the argentinians had were naval versions designed to be lanched from ships. since they were keeping their ships away from the combat zone after a british sub sunk ARA general belgrano.
after that they were left with the very few aircraft lanuched units they had. in the end, 3 hit. one in the HMS sheffield, two on MV atlantic conveyor. sheffild sunk near the exclusion zone. atlantic conveyor lost the cargo and was towed back to england, then scuttled bacuase the damages were so extensive it'd be cheaper to build another ship thank repair her.
to tell the truth, the argentinians were ONE exocet away from winning the war. if they had scored one fatal hit against HMS invincible, that would have given them the war and the malvinas islands. unfortunatelly, our "hermanos" only had one left. the super etendards atacked the invincible with support of four A4 skyhawks, but the exocet only caused superficial damage, and the bombs from the skyhawks missed.
thus the british kept their islands.
disclaimer: i'm brasilian, was alive during the war and living in rio grande do sul, a brasilian state that shares a large border with argentina.
What ? Me, worry ?
How do Israelis manage to build in kill switches on technology developed in Russia and provided to Syria through Iran? That would involve some deep penetration, which I doubt even the Israelis can do. The Russian did pretty much invent counterespionage, after all.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
My experience is with very complex and extremely common silicon wireless transceivers, including RF, PHY, MAC, NWK and even applications functions. 6 to 40 mm^2 of extremely dense circuitry (millions to tens of millions of gates). It would be very easy to put into that a block that would be nearly undetectable and that would cause the transceiver to change its behavior when specific sequences are received over the air. In a major metro area, a single broadcast message could shut down tens of thousands of cellphones or wi-fi devices. For weapons that use that part, it could quickly be "Phaser on OVERLOAD!" That having been said, when we do a design and send the design files overseas to third-party fabs in Asia, it is hard for them to be able to modify anything since the finished part will be different than our design file. But, I suppose if you had the money, resources, and desire for total world domination, anything's possible.
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.
In general, your objections are valid. In this case, the device with the supposed kill switch is a radar. A giant radio receiver. You would be hard pressed to find a better communication channel than that, and it is hidden in plain sight.
Everything that is received by the radar goes through software at some point or other, and this is not trivial stuff, it is likely in ROM and not easily dumped or disassembled. Possibly encrypted to boot. A kill switch in general? Hard. For a radar? very plausible, and most of your objections have a simple answer for a radar.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
The remarkable thing is that 4 exocets hit their targets, caused considerable damage, but none of them exploded! The worst damage was caused when the flame from the solid fuel rockets of the exocets ignited the aluminum hulls, which then could not be extinguished. The british have since reconsidered their decision to build their ships out of inflammable metals. Aluminum will burn even under water, and the only way to extinguish the fire is to smother it with inert materials (non-oxygen bearing).
At the time I thought that one failure to explode was possibly accidental equipment failure, but for all four to fail, that had to be a kill switch. I think the british had the kill codes for the exocets, but only used them to disable the explosive, not the targeting, not thinking about how the heat of the fuel would set the aluminum hull on fire. They were probably under some obligation to the french not to reveal the existance of the kill codes, and to not use the kill codes so as to make the exocets look really bad, like turning them around and hitting argentine positions. that would really kill the market for exocets, wouldn't it.
The wikipedia article on exocets documents the falklands/malvinas war, noting that none of the exocets to hit their targets, actually exploded ... here's wikipedia on the three british ships struck by exocets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Conveyor ...
"On 25 May 1982 the Atlantic Conveyor was hit by two[2] Exocet missiles fired by a pair of Argentine Super Étendard jet fighter. The ship caught fire, the fire then became uncontrollable. When the fire had burnt out, the ship was boarded but nothing was recoverable and so the decision was made to sink her. It is unclear whether the missile's warhead detonated ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet ...
"The Exocet that struck the Glamorgan failed to explode, but the unburnt rocket fuel caused a significant fire."
"The crew of the Sheffield and members of the British Task Force were of the opinion that the missile had exploded, but the official report from the RN Board of Inquiry, now available (2007) on the Internet, states that from the evidence available the warhead did not explode. The damage caused was due to the large kinetic energy of the missile, and the unused missile fuel that ignited on impact."
imagine what the damage would have been if they had actually exploded!