Meshnet Digital Armor To Protect Tanks 164
An anonymous reader writes "General Dynamics Canada and Secure Computing have partnered to develop Meshnet, a hardware/software firewall designed to protect networks and digital devices inside tanks and other military vehicles from hostile computer and virus attacks. Without adequate protection a tech savvy enemy can infiltrate networks, manipulate information, and deny crews the data they need to participate in modern warfare. Exactly such an event happened last year to an Israeli crew, when hackers from Hezbollah eavesdropped on their communications. 'The system uses Secure Computing's off-the-shelf Sidewinder Security Appliance ... Sidewinder consolidates all major Internet security functions into a single system, providing "best-of-breed" antivirus and spyware network protection "against all types of threats, both known and unknown," according to Secure Computing.'"
Sanity check: (Score:5, Insightful)
This unsubstantiated BS as a justification for an obvious product placement requires more scrutiny. I don't doubt that there IS a chance that some enemy force could have the capability to "hack" a tank, but the "Exactly such an event happened last year to an Israeli crew" needs some evidence.
Re:Sanity check: (Score:3, Insightful)
No you think "great, it'll be hard to evesdrop on my conversation, I'm running SSH, it's encrypted!"
So, now some hacker comes along and wants to observe me. He *could* go after my SSH traffic, and try to decode it, but look! I'm not running a firewall or intrusion detection software. He figures (correctly in most cases), it will probably be easier to hack into my system, and put monitors there.
So, without a firewall, he got in easier, and without an intrusion dection system, I didn't find out. I now have a "new" ssh client, that copies everything over to his/her system, all network traffic is sent in duplicate, the keylogger is collecting all my paswords, etc, etc, etc...
The 800 LB gorilla in the room... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't want to imagine (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution the US military will come up with: Spend trillions setting up a super intelligent AI that can defeat hackers on the fly and control all military weapons on it's own to spare ever needing to send real troops into battle again... it will be named Skynet...
Nice ad (Score:5, Insightful)
Single Point of Failure (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sanity check: (Score:3, Insightful)
What is their "antivirus" protecting against? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, what's the threat? "This was reportedly the case during Israel's incursion into South Lebanon last year, where Hezbollah hackers were allegedly able to monitor IDF communications, giving the guerrillas a leg up in attacking Israeli armor." sounds like ordinary signals intelligence. You don't fight that with firewalls and antivirus software, you fight it with encryption and electronic countermeasures like dummy sources to fight tracking and traffic analysis.
Yeah, you go with that. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, there are not. There are very few avenues to crack any system.
#1. Attack the daemon listening on an open port.
#2. Trojans.
#3. Exploiting a vulnerability in an app when fed specific data (IE is a good example).
#4. Viruses that attach themselves to other apps.
Yeah, you've just repeated yourself without explaining how the firewall is supposed to do anything.
No, it is not. They all have the same, limited, avenues of attack. There is nothing "different" about that.
Re:What is their "antivirus" protecting against? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really?
Yeh, I know a lot of people who were working on mil-spec stuff back in the '80s and earlier, and their battlefield and avionic firmware was using languages and systems developed specifically for military use. Some of them were even dismissive of ADA. I think using C++ would have started a rebellion.
I seem to recall a battleship that got stalled a few years back
Yeh, an experimental one. After that fiasco, they went ahead into production?