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Could Tech Have Stopped ISIS From Using Our Own Heavy Weapons Against Us?
JonZittrain writes: This summer, ISIS insurgents captured Mosul — with with it, three divisions' worth of advanced American military hardware. After ISIS used it to capture the Mosul Dam, the U.S. started bombing its own pirated equipment. Could sophisticated military tanks and anti-aircraft missiles given or sold to countries like Iraq be equipped with a way to disable them if they're compromised, without opening them up to hacking by an enemy?
We already require extra authentication at a distance to arm nuclear weapons, and last season's 24 notwithstanding, we routinely operate military drones at a distance. Reportedly in the Falkland Islands war, Margaret Thatcher was able to extract codes to disable Argentina's Exocet missiles from the French. The simplest implementation might be like the proposal for land mines that expire after a certain time. Perhaps tanks — currently usable without even an ignition key — could require a renewal code digitally signed by the owning country to be entered manually or received by satellite every six months or so.
I'm a skeptic of kill switches, especially in consumer devices, but still found myself writing up the case for a way to disable military hardware in the field. There are lots of reasons it might not work — or work too well — but is there a way to improve on what we face now?
We already require extra authentication at a distance to arm nuclear weapons, and last season's 24 notwithstanding, we routinely operate military drones at a distance. Reportedly in the Falkland Islands war, Margaret Thatcher was able to extract codes to disable Argentina's Exocet missiles from the French. The simplest implementation might be like the proposal for land mines that expire after a certain time. Perhaps tanks — currently usable without even an ignition key — could require a renewal code digitally signed by the owning country to be entered manually or received by satellite every six months or so.
I'm a skeptic of kill switches, especially in consumer devices, but still found myself writing up the case for a way to disable military hardware in the field. There are lots of reasons it might not work — or work too well — but is there a way to improve on what we face now?
As desirable as it would be in the case if ISIS, wouldn't implementing such kill switches on weapons be as ineffective as DRM for copyrighted material, with undesirable side-effects for "legitimate uses" and plenty of workarounds for "illegitimate" users?
Could sophisticated military tanks and anti-aircraft missiles given or sold to countries like Iraq be equipped with a way to disable them if they're compromised, without opening them up to hacking by an enemy?
No. Next question.
Any system that's trusted to grant or revoke capabilities must have done way to be authenticated. Any authentication system can be faked with sufficient knowledge. You can control how difficult faking the system can be, or how much knowledge is needed. But it cannot be eliminated.
Could sophisticated military tanks and anti-aircraft missiles given or sold to countries like Iraq be equipped with a way to disable them if they're compromised, without opening them up to hacking by an enemy?
You cannot permanently defend technology with more technology, just add timesinks. If you create a killswitch, you add multiple attack vectors - either the people who control access to the killswitch themselves, the people who designed the killswitch, or the possibility of brute forcing or exploiting that killswitch.
They don't put disable switches in them because the first thing someone would do is figure out how to disable them. So ISIS would have just disabled the Iraqi equipment, seized it, re-enabled it then disabled the switch.
Not even to mention what would happen to US forces if their equipment contained similar devices.
Next question.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
"pirated" is not the verb you want there, it's "stolen". To equate piracy with theft is purely political and thus retarded and dilutes the meaning of both words.
Digital restrictions do not work in the real world. With this the military is going to have to pirate it's own equipment to use it.
I can see it now a soldier out in the field goes to fire a rocket launcher and it goes oops sorry we can't connect to the DRM server please try again later.
Name one DRM scheme that hasn't been cracked?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I am reminded of Asimov's story "The Mayors," in Foundation (first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1942, in which an "ultrawave relay" disables the warship that the Foundation sold to the Anacreonian navy when the Anacreons try to use it against them.
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So what the enemy needs to do to win is to get disable codes?
Given Pentagon's contractor efficiency and reporting requirements, the choices will probably be in a plaintext file accessible from the internet, in a budget report.
How about we just stop invading other countries where we know people don't like to see Americans? If we had opted out of the second Iraq war, we could have saved thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and our own collective faces on the international stage. To top it all off we wouldn't need to be having this discussion at all. We didn't accomplish anything with that war.
I know that is not a popular opinion here, but it is the truth.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Is to stop taking sides in disputes inside hostile (but sovereign) nations and supplying the "good guys" with our weapons.
Because when someone is shooting at you you tend to drop the keys or forget them or lose them. This is why tanks don't require keys now. Someone was attacked and got taken out because they were fumbling with the keys.
I don't want to do a sig now
Bring it all back home. For all the hullabaloo about letting technology getting into "enemy hands", including export restrictions, the "let's just leave a bunch of military hardware in the Middle East" scenario was apparently never considered a risk.
Of course, it's too late now for the Mosul equipment, but the same thing could happen anywhere else in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It's almost as if the belligerent, short-sighted idiots are still in charge.
Would you want a weapon that would only work if someone else said it was okay to use? It's been tried before but it does not work. BTW, did Thatcher herself figure the codes out? and disable them? I think that credit goes to good British Engineers and not to some politician.
"Could Tech Have stopped the mujahadeen from using our own heavy weapons against us?"
"Could Tech Have stopped mexican cartels from using our own heavy weapons against us?"
"Could Tech Have stopped Afghani armed forces from using our own heavy weapons against us?"
"Could Tech Have stopped Iraqi armed forces from using our own heavy weapons against us?"
there is no amount of technology that will intercede to short-circuit the natural conclusion of a foreign policy of wreckless interventionalism
Good people go to bed earlier.
Betteridge aside, what we want and should do is scuttle. Destroy the equipment before it is taken if it cannot be retrieved. There may be some logistical hurdles, but this is far easier and cheaper than retrofitting or designing new weapons with a remote kill switch.
Silence is a state of mime.
"...but is there a way to improve on what we face now?"
Sure there is. If you want to stymie this sort fo thing in the future, all you have to do is stop equipping foreign forces with US hardware.
If you're not selling/giving the hardware to non-US forces, it will be very difficult for non-US forces to get a hold of it.
Pretty simple, though that might cut into some weapon manufacturer's profits so it's probably not tenable.
=Smidge=
I immediately thought of the 1st episode of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, where 99.9% of their modern military force was rendered inoperable. No. Thank. You.
The best "kill switch" is to kill the idea of leaving a ton of advanced military hardware in the hands of less-than-solid governments in the first place (no matter how much defense contractors want to sell their wares). You'd think we would have learned from Iran and the F-14s we left in Iran in the late 1970s as the Islamic Revolution took place.
... Not giving them weapons? As an American Citizen, I'd be serving perhaps 10 years for possessing an M16 machine gun that we were just giving to the Iraqis. When 2nd amendment debates pop up, few people say citizens should be allowed to own tanks, MRAPS etc, but are ok with giving it to a 3rd world country (where many of the Iraqi Army soldiers turned on us as soon as we armed them).
Who is "us" in this story?
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I must say ISIS took a turn that no one was expecting: after much success as a post-metal band and releasing 4 albums, they decided to re-emerge as Islamic terrorist group in Iraq.
When it comes to war and its strategy I trust the in depth reporting 'war nerd' only and he published a very nice article few years back 'Hi-Tech Toys vs Fanged Vermin' and the conclusion is that powerful high-tech weapons are not that much useful in urban warfare. http://exiledonline.com/future...
And Abdel Majed Abdel Bary is British. So the conclusion is obvious... ;)
Germany never attacked us either. Evil should be destroyed when it is encountered. Averting the eyes in the face of evil is evil as well.
True, but don't forget that Germany did declare war on the US first and that the US was more or less obligated to respond in some way... which we did with our own declaration later on the same day.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Thermite grenades, small amounts of ordinary plastic explosives, even pistols for electronics ... sometimes the old ways are best.
Forget the James Bond movie gizmos, that only works in Hollywood.
My Dad spent some time in armored cavalry as both a blacksmith/welder and as a driver. I'm going to have to ask him how much damage he could do with a mechanic's ball been hammer and a couple of minutes.
The French gave the British potentially valuable information on the Exocet's capabilities and limitations, and details on how it operated (e.g. its radar frequency, which you need to know if you want to use jamming).
Despite this, 4 of the 5 Exocets launched were hits, and damaged or sank British ships.
So, we should execute John McCain as a traitor to the US, for providing material support to a terror organization and providing aid and comfort to an enemy?
Because you really don't know what's happening, do you? Mr. Jones?
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Why not just embed the hardware with geo-tracking software of some kind, and hardcode it to specifically not blow up in certain places on the planet. Hell you could even have it blow up immediately, once programmed to explode in the area that you don't want it to. That way you can still sell your weapons, and no need to worry.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
"Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina's deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war"
Bologna.
I've seen the insides of 70's era AM39 Exocet. They don't have codes. They certainly don't have remote turn-off codes.
And then there's the fact that they worked perfectly. Six (five AMs, one SM) launches, four hits. Two sinkings. Much better results than anyone could have predicted.