from the who's-aiming-that-thing,-anyhow? dept.
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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."
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Wednesday October 10 2018, @04:46PM (17 children)
2003 called - they want their unit of measurement for data back.
Seriously - who is currently thinking in terms of "how much data fits on a CD?" as their frame of reference for "how big is a given dataset?" Most modern computers no longer ship with a CD drive.
For those who prefer more well known units of measure, 100GB is one centi-LibraryOfCongress. [loc.gov]
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:14PM (3 children)
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")
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)
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
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
Maybe they should have measured it in porn minutes? "Approximately 8.64 minutes of average porn bandwith for RedTube"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:18PM (11 children)
How about DVDs then? Blue-Ray discs? The problem with any more modern "standardized" unit of capacity is that it's not actually standard. How much is 1 DVD in GB? 4.7? 8.5? I'll bet you your answer depends very much on how large you want your number to look.
If we could trust people to reliably use use the maximum standard capacity though, then at least we'd get a bit more reasonable 100GB = 12 DVDs.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:45PM (4 children)
Or just say 100 gigabytes and leave it at that. Converting it to elephants per library of congress isn't going to make any more sense to someone that doesn't know what a gigabyte is.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 12 2018, @02:29AM (3 children)
A number that means absolutely nothing to a vast swath of humanity. Think of it as a courtesy for the techno-illiterate - not unlike providing non-metric measurements in an article. I'd wager that far more people don't have a good feel of how big a GB is, than don't have a good feel for much a kilogram weighs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @11:11AM (2 children)
Ah but "142 compact discs" means nothing to a similarly vast swath of humanity from the perspective of data storage.
I suspect more people in India/China/Africa have a better (though still vague) idea of what a Gigabyte means than a CD in terms of storage.
Because more of them own feature or smartphones where "GB" is used as a storage measurement, than have owned CD players (or CD writers). Or have data plans that use GB as unit for quota.
In 2018 "approximately 142 compact discs" is more useful as padding to meet a word count target for an article, than for giving a good feel of data storage used.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 12 2018, @02:56PM
Maybe it would have been more impressive to say "over 8 thousand floppy disks". Or better yet, "if this was on floppies and layed end-to-end, they would be over over 11 football fields long!"
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 12 2018, @07:37PM
Which is why it's great that they give the actual 100GB number as well.
Just because I give a measurement in miles, doesn't mean I can't give it in km as well. And if I'm writing for maximum comprehension, I'll give both.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:52PM (5 children)
Yeah, they should have used the 'single side single density 8" floppy disks' MU.
(360kB [wikipedia.org] for those not old enough to have had worked with one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by redneckmother on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:25PM (1 child)
How much in Hollerith cards?
:)
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:40AM
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).
---
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:55AM (2 children)
Everybody forgets reliability factor. How many copies of that floppies one needs?
I still have software and data on 4 bit paper rolls that are in perfect condition to run (inherited from my mother). My own punch cards? They are forever.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:47AM (1 child)
What you seems to forget: the readers and, possible, the IO interfaces with the "computer" to get that data used.
(e.g. good luck trying to find today a computer with RS-232 port. Yes, you can work around, but the info you encoded on that support is not immediately accessible to you)
The problem is even more pronounced with high density storage technology and proprietary storage/document formats.
E.g. good luck trying read a Word document from around 2000 with embedded Visio diagrams (that D/COM server technology? Bad for portability and long time storage of documents).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 12 2018, @12:14AM
Well, I am pretty sure I can build a 4 bit punch tape reader in a long weekend basically from scratch. Come to think about it, I probably would be able to simply write a "character recognition software" for an existing scanner in a few hours.
Later high density storage readers are more difficult, but very possible to build as well. I'd think though that the media would be often corrupted. That's where the interesting part starts - recovery of hidden data...)
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:43PM
This is a good measuring stick of how far behind the times the military's technology is.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday October 10 2018, @04:47PM (7 children)
> downloaded 100 gigabytes, approximately 142 compact discs, of data
I know that the military still has floppies, and that congressmen reading reports are old old farts.
Conversion to CDs just cracks me up. They should really convert the numbers to punch cards, or time the cute typist would take to enter that data...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 10 2018, @04:56PM (4 children)
In some ways, I don't think that's a bad thing. For instance, I remember reading somewhere about the nuclear missile sites relying on 8" floppy disks to launch. Which means that your first challenge if you were trying to hack into those systems is locating an 8" floppy disk, which probably means robbing a museum or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:34PM (2 children)
"Robbing a museum" is involved in the plan, but not at the "obtain 8-inch floppy disks" stage:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TEN-8-inch-32-hard-sectors-SSSD-floppy-disks-NOS-from-factory-sealed-bag-of-25/183468108702 [ebay.com]
Robbing a museum comes in when you get to the "obtain a computer with which to write the data to the disks" stage of the "blow up the world" plan.
(I didn't expect 8-inch disks to be so readily available either before I ran that search...)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:35PM (1 child)
Does searching for 8" floppy disks put you on the Pentagon watch list? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:53AM
Perhaps. As a potential hire when the missile silos personnel retire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:04AM
That's probably for advance (predefined) targeting. I am sure manually entering coordinates works just fine.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday October 10 2018, @05:21PM
One congresscritter asks another:
Hey, doesn't your page boy know something about the cyber and them intarweb tubes?
Yalp! He shore does.
Could you get him to convert this into some kind of useful units of measure like how many compact disks it fits on? Or how many trips to the moon and back this represents in stacked punched cards?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:08PM
Well - officers, maybe. Four years at the academy, three courses of saltpeter enriched meals a day? Yeah - lifetime floppies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @05:53PM (1 child)
Definitely unrealistic -- with inflation, you're gonna need way more quarters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:12PM
Definitely unrealistic -- who carries around coins these days? ;-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:05PM
That's some funny shitzls right there! I think it insults everyone from the operators, to the commanders, to the officials who approved the programs/systems, to congress who paid for it, to the developers, and maybe even the sale pitch assholes. Maybe not the last though. Most of them are too damned stupid to understand an insult.
(Score: 4, Funny) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:36PM
GAO testers were reportedly very, very impressed at the physical flexibility of Pentagon officials. "Dude, how long did you train to be able to stick your head where you have it right now?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:40PM (4 children)
this whole idea of having national governments who steal everyone's money and give it to their respective MIC to increase(? lol) security is ridiculous. the only way to have security one day is to get rid of this whole global scam. de-fund and route around these leaches and death profiteers. replace with voluntary systems enabled by Free technology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:10PM (1 child)
Sadly this approach only works when everyone can agree to follow the same set of rules for the benefit of all. And when they can all agree on how to define "benefit of all." To date, the human race has proven that it won't, and that it won't. In every group over a certain size, there's always some bugger slightly more selfish than the rest who screws it up for everybody.
Back in my long-forgotten youth, I'd hear it justified as "you're a fool if you don't take advantage of this!" (Typically, this would be in a retail setting. Some well-meaning store manager advertises a limited sale, and gets swamped by people abusing the intent/spirit of the act.)
Scaled up to nation-state, and it works right up to the moment your ill-behaved neighbor country decides it needs a little more elbow-room - and you no longer have elbows to push back.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:09PM
Well, that's why you form a network of voluntary contracts to mutually defend other countries like you in the event of such a neighbor's aggression.
(We tried this once, and it worked great right up until some Serbian assassin fucked everything up.)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:27PM
Are you talking about the "Violently Imposed Monopoly"™?
Because if you are you're a very silly boy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:04PM
We'll get right on that, just as soon as you point us to an infinite stack of contract-enforcing turtles for your worldview to stand on...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:25PM (2 children)
This is potentially a very sad story.
Old school defense plan for something bad coming your way was to stop or deflect it.
New school is to smile and send it back home.
With enough control of the other side's systems you don't even have to wait for them to launch something at you.
Perhaps networking platforms together is a two edged sword which has yet to be thought out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:22AM (1 child)
It's worse. Modern way is to ignore: "no way Russia has it, forgetaboutit", "China is a bunch of stealing idiots".
The US is a giant on clay legs at this point. The US have not faced a sophisticated adversary for three generations. Any half modern but determinate state can defeat it just like that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @11:34AM
Half modern? Doubt it.
Much of their older stuff still works and packs a punch. They've been testing them in the Middle East and other places.
And if push comes to shove, they still have nukes[1]. And if the nukes get hacked and don't hit the right targets they could trigger a global nuclear war.
So it's unlikely that any half modern country would want to attack the USA. Too much to lose. If your country was about to officially militarily attack the USA the patriotic thing to do would be to kill your idiot leaders who are trying to do it.
Remember Iraq didn't actually attack the USA, same for Libya, Syria, etc; and yet the US public were so easily swayed into supporting military action against those countries. So imagine what would happen to you if you actually declared war AND tried to defeat the USA in military war and somehow killed enough civilians...
[1] Do things wrong and take things too far and the Russians and Chinese might even support limited use of nukes by the USA (so they can see the US capability in practice). Especially if your country is not near Russia or China...
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:53PM (3 children)
All I have to do is break into an active military base sneak passed armed marines just itching to shoot, well anything, and into a busy control room with my USB stick and 'POOF' I have control of the weapon system ? Nothing could possibly be easier or less dangerous.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday October 10 2018, @10:46PM
If you can get past the gate guards, you can just pretend like you are there to do tech support. So, can we get past the gate guards?
Air Force investigating after man gains access to South Florida military base; says it was a “prank” [wsvn.com]
Woman charged with sneaking into MacDill AFB four times [tampabay.com]
Germany: Intruders Cut Through Perimeter at US Air Base [military.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:16PM
That's where it gets sticky; the environment I was in was slightly less controlled than an arms room. Yes you can tell a civilian "I'm here to change the oil in your rocket launchers" and the civilian will assume we'd let that guy in and steal all the AT4 but in reality security isn't quite that lax unless you got a guy on the inside in which case you don't need all this complicated high tech stuff to lose. If you remember the ft hood shooter in '09, technically he could have snuck in a USB drive and F'ed stuff up, but he had somewhat simpler and more reliable plans that adequately F'ed stuff up.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:58AM
All it takes is a service person with a conscience to be tricked into putting a USB drive in the right port.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:12PM (5 children)
They aren't running a online bank. Or I hope they were not talking about finance POGs.
For a good laugh ask a mil vet where they kept the humvee keys. (There is no such thing...)
There are stories going back to WWII (probably earlier?) of soldiers dying because vehicles were locked up and the only guy with the key got vaporized or medevac'd.
The way the military handles it is you can't steal a SR-71 because the armed guards would shoot you and for cheaper things like humvees our reserve unit had bizarre after market steering wheel locks and stuff like that. Also if someone stole a piece of shit humvee we'd just follow the oil leak and blow them away. Those cool high tech transmissions sure leaked oil real well.
The military has "cheap" labor for guard duty and unlike the civvy world "well the computers were down or my password needed resetting" is not an acceptable excuse for a unit to get blown away.
The database system I admined in the Army (a long time ago, between the gulf wars) had minimal protection from insiders, but to become an insider you'd have to kill the infantry platoon guarding the site, then kill everyone in the van including me and the chief and the LT, then hope things worked afterward, and when you're done you gain info thats frankly not terribly useful without the onsite operators (who are dead, as previously mentioned). So a post it note with the password on it is actually good security in that no enemy hands could get within hundreds of feet of the keyboard unless we're all dead, but a sniper or mortar crew could pick off the CWO-3 from a mile away and then we're all locked out which could tactically be very bad indeed under war time conditions, so post it notes make sense.
(note this system was not networked to the outside world at all, our "WAN" was couriers with floppy disks and/or tapes...)
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:33AM (3 children)
So, what if a military guy of relatively low rank gets pissed off with liberals and decides to nuke NY? Is is feasible?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:48AM (2 children)
IIRC, launching a nuke generally requires two people operating controls on opposite sides of the room at the same time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:02AM (1 child)
Yeah, until someone wires a car battery so they don't have to? Or so they have all 0000000 for launch codes, just so they don't forget? Right?
We are fucking lucky we are still alive.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:55PM
This kind of thing comes up a lot in world building military sci fi type discussions and there's a lot of unclassified info.
Its very unlikely to work in practice.
In the sense that in theory after a zombie apocalypse I or someone similar to me could break into a nuclear power plant and turn it up and generate power, yes. In practice, it would take a team of people roughly the size of the former staffers to realistically pull it off, lacking the experience they won't do as well of a job as the former staffers, and when you're talking those numbers its a successful invasion scenario, not a lone wolf. Also the rest of the world is either not going to help or actively interfere making it even more difficult.
To some extent if the military thought they could get away with a SF sized team running the weapon system, thats all they would staff, so ... given the name "crew served weapon" anything as complicated as a M2 or worse is mostly lone-wolf-proof.
A good analogy is in theory paper and dice role playing games are boring because a player could roll an infinite streak of natural 20s on a D20 devolving the whole game to boredom. In practice its not a serious concern.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:42AM
I suspect you don't think like one of the people who *do* break into systems. That is couldn't be done in the ways you guarded against isn't real evidence that it couldn't be done. Social engineering, much less unexpected bugs, has repeatedly demonstrated that systems presumed secure aren't. So I'm more willing to believe the GAO than apologists for expensive new weapons systems.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:31PM
Along with "your weapon is made by the lowest bidder", we have the fact that the only Soylentil know to be employed in this sector is Ethanol_fueled. He's easy to hack.