Saturday, October 8, 2011

Scary, Scary, Stuff

So, is this some 15 year old kid sitting in China, Russia, Nigeria, Somalia, or N. Korea, who decides to hit a few keys on his laptop, hack into our "ultra top secret" military system, and reroute some Predator drones from their assigned targets? And if that turns out to be the case, can he send them to, say, NYC, (preferably Wall St.) Chicago, or the nearest US military base?

Computers have been the greatest asset to mankind since the wheel, and perhaps even more important than that. But, as we all know, they can sometimes be your worst nightmare. What makes this story really scary is not simply the potential for the catastrophic damage that could be caused, but the fact they they just don't know what it is...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/10/07/2011-10-07_american_military_drones_infected_with_virus__that_officials_cant_wipe_report.html

4 comments:

Schteveo said...

No it's NOT some goofy kid in his mothers basement in Sheboygen.

It's people NOT following strict computer security protocol. Somebody went to Gay_Jamaican_Boys_on_Boys.com and picked up a virus. THEN they went back to work and had the key STROKE virus in everything they sent as the last update. I'm betting two things!

1.) it's been there longer than two weeks.

2.) we won't know who cause it, who got canned for it but I'm betting item 3 is known to ALL of us.

3.) guess who pays for the fix!?

Spider said...

Do you think it's that simple? I truly hope so, if for no other reason than the safety of our warriors, especially given the fact that so much of our combat capabilities today are internet based.

Schteveo said...

I do think it's that (stupid) simple.

We've been 'hacked' a dozen times and it was discovered immediately. I know enough about industrial net security to know the feds are light years ahead on keeping people out. Look at the system and situation involved.

All that's happening is the key strokes are being saved to DoD computers in a file off in the corner. Even if someone could get in to see what they key stroked, all they'll see is the changes made to mission parameters. After the fact someone will have a record of what happened since they collected the file LAST time.

(except they have no way to get to it!)

Going to Afghanistan or Iraq and counting the new bomb holes would be as accurate. And trust me, Amnesty International is ALREADY doing this so they can charge the U.S. in World Court in The Hague.

IF you hacked into the drone web. And you got in long enough to plant lines of code. Would you simply put in a key stroke collector? Or would you put in lines of code that completely disabled the drones? Or would you put in code that followed directions from the drone driver, BUT it followed them via a random number generator that was 45 to 180 degrees off of the task sent from the joy stick?

If the job was to take over, or control the drones this failed miserably!

Spider said...

I get your point, but remember, this is what we're being told so far. Is there more?