Government report reveals Pentagon weapons can easily be hacked
A brief look at the news is enough for anyone to realize that cyber attacks are a real threat. Just recently, we’ve seen western governments strongly condemn Russia for hacking attacks. We also saw a couple of reports that claimed that China could backdoor into products using hardware implants — although one of them was strongly refuted. And we shared a story about Google+ suffering from a serious security issue that Google was afraid to tell the public about.
With all that in mind, you’d expect the Pentagon’s newest weapons to be protected by all sorts of complex systems meant to thwart cyber attacks. It turns out that’s not the case.
A brand new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), picked up by Reuters and NPR among others, reveals that nearly all of the Pentagon’s new weapons are susceptible to hacks. In some cases, weapons programs officials dismissed the potential attacks, calling the tests unrealistic. In other instances, they acknowledge that the flaws were known, but only partially repaired.
