New Pentagon weapons systems easily hacked: report
New Pentagon weapons systems easily hacked: report
AFP • October 9, 2018
Washington (AFP) - New US weapons systems being developed
by the US Department of Defense can be easily be hacked by adversaries, a new
government report said on Tuesday.
The Government Accountability Office said the Pentagon
was unaware of how easy it could be for an adversary to gain access to the
computer brains and software of the weapons systems and operate inside them
undetected.
The weak points began with poor password management and
unencrypted communications, it said.
But it said access points for the systems continued to
grow in number and are not always well-understood by the operators themselves,
leaving even non-networked systems deeply vulnerable.
More critically, the report faulted the US military for
not incorporating cybersecurity into the design and acquisition process for the
computer-dependent weapons, and said weapons developers often did not
themselves adequately understand cybersecurity issues.
"Due to this lack of focus on weapon systems
cybersecurity, DOD likely has an entire generation of systems that were
designed and built without adequately considering cybersecurity," the GAO
said.
"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," it said.
In another case, it said, the test team gained control of
the terminals of the system's operators.
"They could see, in real-time, what the operators
were seeing on their screens and could manipulate the system."
The public, unclassified version of the report did not
identify which arms systems it had tested and found faults with, citing the
need for secrecy.
But it said that between 2012 and 2017, the Defense
Department's own testers "routinely" found dangerous cyber
vulnerabilities in "nearly all" weapons systems under development.
"Using relatively simple tools and techniques,
testers were able to take control of these systems and largely operate
undetected. In some cases, system operators were unable to effectively respond
to the hacks," it said.
The risk rises as Pentagon weapons and other systems are
increasingly interconnected and their dependence on software and networking continues
to rise.
The report came as the US government wrestles with what
it sees as concerted efforts by government-backed hackers in Russia and China
to permeate government and private sector computer networks to steal data or
simply wreak havoc.
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