What's scarier than that weird guy on the block that decides to decorate his house for Halloween in August? The answer, military weapon systems being hacked in less than an hour by two people. Yes, you read that right.
The AFP reported yesterday that a test team of two hackers were able to gain initial access to weapons systems and about a day to have total control of those systems. While the report did not speak to which systems were affected, thankfully, it did say that the hackers were able to take full control of the operation terminals of those systems as well. The D.O.D. seems to continually focus on new weapons systems, yet fails to secure them properly. The article by the AFP went on to say that even the contractors building the weapons didn't think of securing the computer based weapons from attacks.
During the testing the system operators were even unable to successfully defend against some of the attacks, which to me says that the military should be putting more focus on who is operating those systems, and not just someone with the ability to push a button or two.
If you ask me, all of this seems pretty par for the course of the D.O.D. and it would seem that as the risks get higher and higher, failing to defend against attacks on things like weapons systems, should be grounds for immediate dismissal of the position that let it get that far to begin with. These should be some of the most secure systems on the face of the planet, yet the military continues to allow inept and ignorant contractors take billions of taxpayer dollars to build something that could make a really big boom on the black market economy.
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