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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, Funny) by redneckmother on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:25PM (1 child)

    by redneckmother (3597) on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:25PM (#747198)

    How much in Hollerith cards?
    :)

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:40AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:40AM (#747214) Journal

    Depends. For a 80 cols card used with FORTRAN
    - if it's DATA or COMMENT section, you can use 78 characters/card
    - if it's code section, only 72 characters/card, reserve 8 for jump label and continuation character.

    Then you'll need to choose your MU to make sense for the layman - probably assume a certain cardboard density and express the amount of information in metric tonnes of punch cards (alternativelym, use firkins in FFF system).

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    On a personal experience note: I never managed to write a program on punch cards that didn't results in a listing completely made of syntax errors. Happened in my first year at Uni, the effing punchers where mechanically comatose and needed very determined keypresses to actuate or would lock a key and fill the rest of the card with the same character, the keyboard layout was weird and the paint for the letters almost gone.
    On top of it, you delivered your stack of card on Monday and get the listing on Thursday - the bloody C++ programmers whinging today of long compilations! Don't have a clue on the meaning of "long compilation times".

    After one semester trying to do a simple "trapezoidal rule" integration I gave up and found myself a Sinclaire Spectrum clone to play with.

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