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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 10 2018, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the who's-aiming-that-thing,-anyhow? dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Pentagon's new next-gen weapons systems are laughably easy to hack | ZDNet

New computerized weapons systems currently under development by the US Department of Defense (DOD) can be easily hacked, according to a new report published today.

The report was put together by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for Congress.

Congress ordered the GAO report in preparation to approve DOD funding of over $1.66 trillion, so the Pentagon could expand its weapons portfolio with new toys in the coming years.

But according to the new report, GAO testers "playing the role of adversary" found a slew of vulnerabilities of all sort of types affecting these new weapons systems.

"Using relatively simple tools and techniques, testers were able to take control of systems and largely operate undetected, due in part to basic issues such as poor password management and unencrypted communications," GAO officials said.

The report detailed some of the most eye-catching hacks GAO testers performed during their analysis.

In one case, it took a two-person test team just one hour to gain initial access to a weapon system and one day to gain full control of the system they were testing.

Some programs fared better than others. For example, one assessment found that the weapon system satisfactorily prevented unauthorized access by remote users, but not insiders and near-siders. Once they gained initial access, test teams were often able to move throughout a system, escalating their privileges until they had taken full or partial control of a system.

In one case, the test team took control of the operators' terminals. They could see, in real-time, what the operators were seeing on their screens and could manipulate the system. They were able to disrupt the system and observe how the operators responded.

Another test team reported that they caused a pop-up message to appear on users' terminals instructing them to insert two quarters to continue operating.

Multiple test teams reported that they were able to copy, change, or delete system data including one team that downloaded 100 gigabytes, approximately 142 compact discs, of data.

The report claims the DOD documented many of these "mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities," but Pentagon officials who met with GAO testers claimed their systems were secure, and "discounted some test results as unrealistic."


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  • (Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:14PM (3 children)

    by rigrig (5129) Subscriber Badge <soylentnews@tubul.net> on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:14PM (#747070) Homepage

    Nobody is, reporters are thinking "What well-known object can I convert <measurement> to and have it come out as a number between 10 and 1000?"
    (Sadly, they have somehow missed the opportunity to convert data to "USB sticks")

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:25PM (#747073)

    Anything after the DVD has not has fixed standard sizes, and 21 DVDs (or 11 double-layer ones) didn't look like enough stolen information.

    "44.4 PBR hours" would be a good metric (Pai broadband rate = 5Mb/s = 2.25GB/h)

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:36PM (#747100)

      21 DVDs (or 11 double-layer ones) didn't look like enough stolen information.

      What? How could that not be enough stolen information? 21 DVDs is something like 21 movies, which I understand from the MPAA is something like $840 billion dollars of economic damage.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:04PM (#747087)

    Maybe they should have measured it in porn minutes? "Approximately 8.64 minutes of average porn bandwith for RedTube"