Hackers have accessed designs for more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems, according to a devastating classified report from a Pentagon advisor shared with the Washington Post.
Although the report from the Defense Science Board did not identify the hackers, senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches say they come primarily from China, according to Ellen Nakashima of the Post.
A public version of the report released in January warned of an "existential cyber attack" with "potentially spectacular" effects.
Some of the more disturbing leaks include designs for cutting edge jets, missile systems, and electronic warfare technology.
Here's a partial list of compromised designs:
F-35
V-22
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD Missile Defense)
Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (Patriot missile defense system)
AMRAAM (AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile)
Global Hawk (high altitude surveillance drone)
PII (email addresses, SSN, credit card numbers, passwords, etc.)
“That’s staggering,” Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank that focuses on Asia security issues, told the Washington Post. “These are all very critical weapons systems, critical to our national security. When I hear this in totality, it’s breathtaking.”
What this means for the U.S., strategically speaking, boils down the F-35 weapons systems: they're all run with complex software, and are hooked up to a cryptographic intranet communications systems.
In plain english: they can be hacked.
From a September 2012 Reuters story:
The military's move toward greater use of so-called autonomic weapons systems, which rely heavily on computers, promises to revolutionize the way weapons are maintained and operated, but also carries a new level of cyber risk.
And the weapons designers are having difficulty keeping up with the hackers.
So just like in the movie Independence Day, in theory Chinese hackers could use electronic warfare to give F-35 weapons systems a cold, make them sick, essentially inoperable.
For China, strategically speaking it's about fabrication.
Evidently part of the big haul was schematics for small parts needed to set up manufacturing for these weapons systems. China apparently uses several different means to gain access to these Defense Systems, most of them utilizing what Information Security experts call "human engineering"— when manipulative emails or clever online con-men actually get victims to divulge information on their own.
From Quartz:
[One more convincing tactic is executed] by creating innocuous-looking companies and research institutes that reach out to US companies, researchers and universities under the guise of civilian cooperation, only to steal their technology and experts for use by the PLA.
It's not clear yet what this means for China's military. China's defense industry has been plagued with corruption and projects that run over cost, require frequent modification, and often rely on second-hand Russian technology.
But they're getting better.
Just take a look at this excerpt from a brief study on China's aviation industry:
Notwithstanding some persistent weaknesses, the industry can now manufacture nearly every type of platform and system that China’s defence requires. In the process, the industry’s ability to innovate has leapt ahead. While once they were trapped in static patterns of imitation, China’s manufacturers now produce items showing creative adaptations and signs of architectural innovation.
Still, the full extent of China's ability to fabricate actual jets and missiles from these plans is still uncertain.
"Some of the Chinese defense groups are already quite strong after so much military spending in recent years, but you don't know exactly how well they are doing financially or technologically because China does not want others to know," Wu Da, a portfolio manager at Beijing-based Changsheng Fund Management Co Ltd which invests in listed Chinese defense stocks, told Reuters.
SEE ALSO: Why Chinese Hacking Is NOT An Act Of War
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