Tuesday, October 11, 2011

virus infects drone network

NPR | A few weeks ago, at Creech Air Force base in Nevada, computer security experts came upon a virus in their network. The virus was recording every keystroke made by Air Force pilots who remotely operate Predator and Reaper drones that fly over war zones. And so far, they can't seem to wipe the virus from the system. Guy Raz talks to Noah Shachtman, contributing editor at Wired magazine, who first reported the story.

8 comments:

umbrarchist said...

Now that is weird.  How did whoever did it have access to the system to get the virus in?  Do they have a mole?

John Kurman said...

Guns? Bombs? How quaint! How 20th century! We gonna stuxnet your firstworlder ass. Shove a thumbdrive right up it.

CNu said...

Umbra, first it's all Windows, and not milspec certified Windows either. Second, they shuttle data between the classified and not classified networks on removable external drives. To John's point below, shoving a thumbdrive right up it, and that's where these worms and bots tend to hide and proliferate.

umbrarchist said...

 Windows?  Windows!!   WINDOWS!!!

They are running military equipment with bombs on WINDOWS???

ROFLMBAO

No wonder there is so much collateral damage.

CNu said...

Milspec Windows is no joke, but if you listen to the broadcast, you'll hear that this is running on standard commercial Windows (I'd bet 2003 server and XP) rather than C2 or higher certified microshizzles...,

umbrarchist said...

How many different versions of Windows have there been?

They are just making different versions for the money.

We should all have MilSpec Windows.  It is probably just well written software.  LOL

CNu said...

Versions is not so much the issue Umbra, rather, it's the configuration and maintenance of that configuration that's in question here http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/ncp/repository

For the sake of a Windows discussion, I'd suggest going back no further than Windows 2000 server (yup, you still encounter these running old architecture applications), Windows 2003/2008 Server and for the end-point workstations, Windows XP Professional/Enterprise and Windows 7 Professional/Enterprise (you don't see very much Vista (folks knew it was less than half-baked and left it alone.)

Makheru Bradley said...

Too bad it isn't a technical version of Ebola which grounds the whole damn murderous fleet.  Off topic but a real good documentary of US imperial arrogance and murder in Latin America can be found here:


  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18236.htm

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