US weapons systems can be hacked easily

A number of the most present day weapons within the US's military arsenal may be "without difficulty hacked" the use of "fundamental tools", a central authority record has concluded.

The authorities duty office (GAO) located "task-crucial" cyber-vulnerabilities in nearly all weapons systems tested among 2012 and 2017.

That includes the most up-to-date F-35 jet in addition to missile structures.

Inside the file, Pentagon officials said they "believed their systems had been comfy", NPR reported.

The committee's contributors expressed worries about how covered weapon structures were towards cyber-assaults.

The file's major findings had been:

The Pentagon did now not change the default passwords on more than one guns systems - and one modified password was guessed in 9 seconds

A team appointed by the GAO was capable of easily advantage manage of 1 guns device and watch in real time as the operators replied to the hackers

It took some other -character team only one hour to gain initial get right of entry to to a weapons gadget and sooner or later to advantage complete control

A number of the test teams have been able to replica, alternate or delete gadget statistics with one group downloading a hundred gigabytes of statistics

The GAO brought that the Pentagon "does now not recognize the total scale of its guns machine vulnerabilities".

The Pentagon has no longer issued a detailed response to the 50-page record but the report quoted officials as pronouncing that a number of the safety check results "had been unrealistic".

Ken Munro, an professional at safety firm Pen test companions, said he changed into "in no way amazed" via the findings.

"It takes a long term to develop a weapons machine, frequently primarily based on iterations of tons older structures. As a end result, the additives and software program can be based totally on very antique, susceptible code.

"developers regularly overlook 'hardening' the safety of structures after they've got them running, with the philosophy, 'it is running, so do not mess with it'.

"however, it is no excuse. This document suggests some very fundamental security flaws that would without difficulty have been addressed by converting passwords and maintaining software program up to date."

Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.