Gaps In Software Make U.S. Military Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks

by JASmius



Terrific.

Somewhere in Pyongyang at this very moment, Kim jong-Un just nocturnally emitted:

Serious gaps in military software that make America vulnerable to an enemy who launches a cyberattack are causing Congress to consider a $200 million, three-year effort to close those gaps.

Both House and Senate versions of the allocation under the $612 billion 2016 defense authorization bill are expected to be completed by the end of summer.

But the Senate, fearing military slowness in implementing necessary fixes to the nation's computerized defense, is also considering an additional $75 million to jump start U.S. Cyber Command efforts to upgrade software systems, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

This is a belated response to a gaping vulnerability that has been hanging ass out to wind for a long time:

Those concerns are based on a 2013 report from the Defense Science Board, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, which found that the military's cyber-protection systems are lagging, and added that the Department of Defense (DOD) "is not prepared to defend against this threat."

Further, the report states that the U.S. "cannot be confident that our critical Information Technology (IT) systems will work under attack from a sophisticated and well-resourced opponent utilizing cyber capabilities in combination with all of their military and intelligence capabilities," and that "It will take years for the Department to build an effective response to the cyber threat to include elements of deterrence, mission assurance and offensive cyber capabilities."

The report warns that U.S. "Red Teams" testing military computer systems "using cyber attack tools which can be downloaded from the Internet, are very successful at defeating our systems." [emphases added]

No Decepticon metavirus necessary....



Is there any part of our national security infrastructure or capabilities that Barack Obama hasn't defenestrated?  Make you wonder who is first in line to cyber-paralyze us - the NoKos, the Russians, the Islamic State, the Iranians, or the ChiComms, who have also already "hacked into U.S. defense contractors, obtaining information on defense systems such as the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter, which could enable China to 'disrupt the aircraft's sophisticated electronics, rendering the jet either ineffective in combat or, more likely, vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated Chinese air defenses'" - and why they haven't done it already.

I appreciate and support what congressional Republicans are trying to do in plugging this Mack truck-sized cyber-hole in U.S. defenses, but the reality is that it is years late and billions of dollars short.  One more instance of Red Barry "lowering [us] to the level of the rest of the world," and our having to hope, pray, and hold our breath through this period of perilous vulnerability that We, The People will somehow survive it - a bet that we, sooner or later, must lose.