The US has the most cutting-edge next-gen weapons system in its military arsenal. But this won’t do any good if these top-notch weapons system can be easily hacked if someone uses the basic tools to acquired them. A government report has concluded that most of these weapons can be controlled in a hacker tries to sneak in.
The GAO aka Government Accountability Office has reportedly found that the there is a cyber vulnerability based on “mission critical” in almost every single weapon system that has been tested between the year 2012 and 2017.
The list of the weapons also includes the newest jet F-53 as well as the missile system.
The National Public Report has reported that the officials in Pentagon have said in a report that they use to feel their weapons systems were secure.
The members of the committee have reportedly expressed their concerns about how the protected weapon systems could keep the cyber attacks at bay.
The main findings of the reports were:
- The Pentagon hasn’t changed the default passwords on many weapons systems – most importantly one changed password is guessed in every nine seconds.
- A team that was appointed by GAO could quickly gain control of one of the weapons system, and they even watched in the real-time as the operators have responded the hackers.
- A two-person team only took one hour to gain access to the initial control of the weapons system, and they reportedly took one day to gain complete control.
- Most of the test teams could copy, delete and even change the system data in accordance with one group downloading a hundred gigabytes of data.
GAO also noted that the Pentagon doesn’t have the complete idea about the weapons system vulnerabilities.
One of the experts at Pen Test Partners, a security firm, Ken Munro said that he wasn’t surprised by the recent development of vulnerabilities of the weapons system.
