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.'"

Comments

Syria, you morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's not very sophisticated after all

[paiute]

(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.

Re:It's not very sophisticated after all

[jbeaupre]

The kill switch signal could be on the same frequency as the radar, thus shunted straight into the control circuity. No need for a separate antenna or circuit. The kill switch is just hidden on some IC that also processes the radar signal itself. The right kill signal comes in, the IC shuts down. If the radar has IFF capability, even better. Second signal to monkey with, and even easier to spoof.

Outsourcing

[whisper_jeff]

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...

Re:Open Source

[ElectricTurtle]

4chan is not your personal army...

Don't buy weapons from your enemies?

[Seth Kriticos]

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?

Syrians have U.S. military hardware ?

[ivan_w]

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

Re:Syrians have U.S. military hardware ?

[ElectricTurtle]

Maybe some of the US hardware from Iran during the Shah era has flowed to Syria? That's the thing with military hardware, once you sell it to somebody, there's very little you can do to keep them from passing it to somebody else. In that context, kill switches are genius (assuming the 'enemy' doesn't hack your Gibson).

This happens quite often in many devices

[ctrl-alt-canc]

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...

Re:Thatcher and Argentina

[HawkinsD]

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.

Riiight

[Culture20]

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.

Re:Riiight

[R2.0]

Here's another explanation - it's a red herring. By floating this story, you kill 2 birds:

1) It "explains" the lack of Syrian response in a way that maintains security on the real capabilities of Israeli jamming, and

2) It sends foreign powers on a wild goose chase, spending resources trying to root out "kill switches" that aren't there. This takes away from resources that could be spent improving the system's ability to see through jamming.

The elegance is that it has JUST enough plausibility that it can't be ignored, due to the (now) well publicized Soviet gas pumping station sabotage.

Re:Riiight

[LWATCDR]

Maybe or it could just be that the US has samples of all these radar systems and found the best way to jam or overload them.
Nothing is perfect so I am sure they have torn those system apart and found any weakness. The US then shared that information.
Kind of like in WWII when the US found a Zero.
They found that the Zero had a longer range, could out climb, out turn, and was faster than the F4F fighters the US had. The only thing advantage the F4F had was that it could out dive the Zero and as built like a tank.
The one problem it had was at high speed it didn't turn well to the left. So F4Fs made diving attacks at high speed and turned left to escape. The F4F ended up with a very good kill rate when dealing with the Zero.
If you can find a weakness and exploit it you will often win.

Re:Lesson learned?

[OzPeter]

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.

And in TFA they say that only 20% of chips are manufactured in the US - so that makes it kinda hard not to buy goods from foreign countries.

However what you are suggesting is that 100% of goods used by the US military should be made in the US - and that might be a good reason in itself as that would certainly stimulate the US economy

Semiconductor Executive Should Be Investigated

[fwr]

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.

Standard operating procedure

[spikesahead]

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.

Re:Standard operating procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Open Source

[Lumpy]

Oh jeebus. Building a missile, bomb or anything that kills people is NOT HARD. I can get the relevant documents needed for anyone with a mild training in electronics to build a guidance system for a missile or a homing system for a rocket.

If you think there is something magical and wondrous in military hardware that makes it "special" you are watching way too much TV.

Hell I have made ground launched model rockets that would home in on a ground target, and I did not use GPS to get within a 50 foot radius from a 1500 foot apogee point. This was with very basic electronics and almost no processing power plus parts from a hobby shop for helicopter and RC plane flying.

I only needed 1-29/240 size engine to lift that payload. This was back in college for my EE degree, with todays stuff I could make the accuracy far better and use off the shelf GPS for long range AND would not need to lift as much as servos are smaller and lighter and the avaionics payload would be far lighter.

Note: you can even buy UAV kits today.

Re:Thatcher and Argentina

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

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.

uhh...Russian technology

[Nidi62]

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.

Re:Open Source

[tibman]

I'm sure the EE guys who built the Syrian's air defense system thought the same way as you. "I'll use all this great off-the-shelf tech, it's just so easy". Ohhh, it had a backdoor in the hardware... damn.

I do get what you're saying, but i think it applies differently to platforms of war. When your opponent owns the companies that built half the parts for your weapon systems... can you really trust them?

I have no doubt you could build some nifty weapons to seige a neighbor with but not a local government. The bomb techs would have analyzed the debris and come up with a short list for an investigator to pin down.

One of my fav military techs is round return radar... even though it is simple and old. There's nothing like hearing outgoing fire before the first incoming round hits!

Re:Open Source

[Cyberax]

Yes, toy rockets won't be reliable. Yes, they'll often fail. Yes, it's hard to scale the production.

But they're more than enough for one-off operations like assassinations or terror acts.

Re:Open Source

[2obvious4u]

I think you missed the point. Yes military grade guidance systems that are accurate to with 1 meter and travel 500 miles are very advanced and a hobbyist couldn't build that from hobby store parts. However, if your goal is to indiscriminatingly kill people it is very easy to do with off the shelf components, if you are so inclined.

Another thing you are forgetting is that we built atomic bombs with minimal computing power. The first computers had trouble doing ballistic tables. Now you could make ballistics tables as an iPhone app. The level of information processing available to the public is staggering. There really isn't much that an individual so inclined couldn't produce.

Re:Open Source

[kent_eh]

Ummm. I think you guys are trying to make slightly different points.

The parent was (I think) trying to refute the "you need secret stuff to build a machine that kills people" type claim.
Which in no way contradicts your experience based statement, which I interpret as: "you really do need lots of advanced hi-tech to build an accurate, advanced, effective killing machine"

Re:Thatcher and Argentina

[HawkinsD]

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.