Chinese Hackers Steal Top US Weapons Designs

n1ywb writes "Chinese hackers have gained access to the designs of many of the nation's most sensitive advanced weapons systems, according to a report prepared for the Defense Department and government and defense industry officials,The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The compromised weapons designs include, among others, the advanced Patriot missile system, the Navy's Aegis ballistic missile defense systems, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter." Also (with some more details and news-report round-up) at SlashBI.

Comments

Internet connection

[Gutboy]

Why is information like this on computers that are connected to the internet?

Re:Internet connection

[gstoddart]

Was thinking the same thing. Used to be you kept your secure stuff on a network with an air-gap between it and the rest of the world.

Given how many stories we've been seeing about these hacking attempts, to have those machines accessible from the outside network means people haven't been paying attention.

Given that you still can't export some software due to encryption, to have the plans for these kinds of things be something hackers can get into is a pretty stunning failure.

Re:Internet connection

[tnk1]

Thing is... a lot of this is about performance. If they create, say, a fighter with the performance of the F-35, then it's a real problem.

Granted, I do remember there being (supposedly) faulty plans during the Cold War that we intentionally allowed the Soviets to get, and when they used it in their pipelines, there were some catastrophic accidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage

Re:Internet connection

[MightyYar]

Think about all of the people that have access to these drawings in electronic form. You have the designers, the testing folks, the documentation people, the people who approve changes, the entire manufacturing operation, and anyone with authority to oversee the project. If any of those people view the document on a compromised computer or themselves are compromised, the drawing is in the wild.

And "compromised" does not necessarily mean "internet". And you don't even need a compromise - people make mistakes, systems are imperfect. Someone could toss a server or workstation in the trash, screwing up the wipe. A leased computer could go back without getting cleaned up. They could even accidentally wire up the "secure" computer to the LAN/WAN, wireless could accidentally be left on, USB ports left active, bluetooth, etc.

Spying has been going on for a long, long time and is a very difficult problem to solve. Hell, even a compromised cleaning crew could snatch stuff.

Re:Internet connection

[Rich0]

Actually, if they create a fighter with the performance of the F-35, it wouldn't be a problem at all... as the F-35 is massively expensive

When a fighter jet costs $150M/plane it usually means that the plane takes $10M in materials and labor to build, and $140M goes towards paying off the costs of designing the thing in the first place. It is really a $10M plane with a $1T design phase (or whatever the figure is).

Somebody copying the plane only needs to pay the $10M/plane - they don't have to redesign the whole thing from scratch. I'm sure it won't cost them nothing to start from the US blueprints, but overall it will be WAY cheaper.

taking years longer to develop

Not an issue for China. They'll just wait until we're done, and then roll out the copies after a year or two of reverse-engineering. In the meantime nobody is flying the thing.

and still can barely get off the ground.

Also not an issue for China. They'll just wait until we figure out all the problems and then copy the design that actually works.

Copying is WAY cheaper than inventing. Even if all they had as a photo of the thing it would be much cheaper. How many overall designs were tossed because using thrust vectoring vs a lift fan was an unclear design decision? The US has to spend hundreds of millions on prototypes and testing to figure out which design is better. The Chinese just have to see what we picked. If the whole VTOL design turns out to be impractical and gets canceled then they get the same data point that we get but for zero cost.

Today it is easy to point out what the design of the space shuttle was bad, even without the blueprints. Anybody who is interested in submarines knows that a 7-blade propeller is much quieter than a 4-blade one, but for many years this was a closely guarded secret that just a glance at a propeller would have leaked.

When you're doing something that has never been done before most of the cost is only incurred by the first person to have to figure it out. That's the price of innovation. Followers can always do it much cheaper.

allies?

[dontfearthereaper]

I hope this opens people's eyes... The Chinese are NOT our allies, and it has been this way for years. Goes to show that the large corporations have more power in this country than the gubbmint and sheeple combined.

Re:allies?

[HeckRuler]

Wut? The Chinese are just trying to make a living. Most are minnow farmers moving to city factory jobs. They're developing a middle class and as whole are going through a lot of changes very quickly. We've been through that rodeo before and we can foresee some of the stresses and strain they're going to go through, but by and far populations like that can

China, the country, and more specifically the government running the show, is an ally. But they're not an altruistic beacon of good. They're really just in the game to help themselves. Just like all of our other allies. Great Britian, France, Japan, the Saudi family, Iraq, they are our allies, but don't give the term too much weight. Once it suits their intrests to stab us in the back they will. And, sadly, we would do the same. Because this isn't some utopian fantasy land where everyone plays nice. It's a competative game where we can increase our score by working together, so we do, for now. They're allies the same way that Wall Street, Hollywood, Monsanto, Texas, and Silicon Valley are our "allies". Sure, they're ostensibly working on our side, under our rules (mostly), and we get goods and taxes out of them (sometimes). But they're not in it for our own well being. They want cash and power. They have their own agenda and plans. We all do. And those fuckers on Wall Street have taken the whole economy hostage and demanded free money to clean up their shit.

But yeah, some of our allies would suffer more if we got pissed at them. Those are closer allies than others. China isn't that close of an ally.

All part of our diabolical plan...

[msauve]

now let them build what's in those plans, and go into perpetual national debt, crippling their economy, too!

Most advanced?

[Nidi62]

Patriot Missile: In service since 1981

Aegis: In development since the 1980s, first test 1999

F/A-18: Introduced in service in 1983

V-22:First flew in 1989, entered service 2007, was unreliable for several years after that. It took us over 20 years to fully develop it

Black Hawk: Introduced 1979

F-35: An expensive piece of crap that can do a lot of different things not so well (a couple gems from a 2011 Pentagon study: The fuel dump subsystem poses a fire hazard, The airframe is unlikely to last through the required lifespan, The aircraft is in danger of going overweight or, for the F-35B, not properly balanced for VTOL operations, There are multiple thermal management problems. The air conditioner fails to keep the pilot and controls cool enough, the roll posts on the F-35B overheat, and using the afterburner damages the aircraft.) Would be a waste of money to try and reproduce.

I am 26 years old, and most of these systems were in development or introduced before I was born. The 2 most recent technologies have been fraught with problems in development, production, and deployment. Maybe they should just go ahead and give the Chinese the F-22 plans as well, so half of their pilots will asphyxiate. I'm not worried about the Chinese gaining access to equipment that has been in use for decades: once something is out in the open and being used in combat/training operations, their capabilities are easily discerned and easy to copy. I would be more concerned if they got access to anything in development that we don't know about, the stuff the government is working on that they haven't revealed.

Consequence of outsourcing IT and development...

[Anonymous Coward]

Big companies tend to misclassify IT as a cost center, and apply brilliant programs like Six Sigma and Virtual Workforces to cut expenses. I've seen plenty of dangerously unqualified people assigned to set firewall and router rules on networks that contain corporate crown jewels, or open NAT paths to offshore contracting houses brought in to help make a schedule after attrition and 'rightsizing' have made it impossible to stick to the schedule handed down from above.

In the old days this stuff would be kept on airgapped networks. Today we have 'globalized workforces' and companies are run by MBAs who don't really understand or care about things the military does. Patriotism? Doesn't appear in my mission statement...

Posted as AC as I work for a figurehead of this problem, and waste time keeping networks I'm responsible for clear of the APTs I see continually from other parts of the companies network that NOBODY wants to talk about. You can get fired for pointing out they've cut the budgets too far. So frustrating...

Re:Design != manufacture capability

[kbonin]

Yes, but manufacturing processes are often also obtainable documents. Any company who has set up good process control around their manufacturing lines has probably documented almost if not everything needed to recreate their subset of the secret sauce. Due to subcontracting these constitute a more distributed set of targets, and probably have local IT staff better capable of locking down their small networks than a megacorp oursourcing model would, but its probably all still there...

Under Obama heads will roll.

[fredrated]

The heads of the people that let this leak be known. Not the hackers, not the people that made this information available on the internet, but the people that let America know that it was hacked. They will do jail time, and they will be the only people that do jail time.