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.

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...

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...

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: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.