Enemies know how to fight the
fighter
The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the Pentagon's
costliest weapons program, the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project has
been repeatedly breached by hackers.
Apparently the hackers have stolen data
related to design and electronics systems, making it potentially easier to
defend against the plane. Most of the really top secret data was not
connected to the Internet, but the project seems to have had enough damage done
to it for top defence chiefs to be worried.
It appears that the weakness in
the network was through contractor's networks which were involved in building
the fighter jet. That means Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE
Systems had holes wide enough to let the hackers in. The identity of the
attackers and the amount of damage to the project could not be established but
needless to say everyone is looking at China.
The attacks appear to have come
from behind the bamboo curtain, but as China points out, that just means that
they used a proxy server based in that country.