Communications of the ACM
Cyber Tests Showed 'Nearly All' New Pentagon Weapons Vulnerable to Attack, GAO Says
A new U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that most of the U.S. Department of Defense's newest weapons systems are plagued by security issues.
Credit: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Most of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) newest weapons systems are plagued by security issues, including passwords that took seconds to guess or were never changed from their factory settings, and cyber vulnerabilities that were known but never corrected, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The study found the Pentagon is “just beginning to grapple with” the scale of the vulnerabilities to its weapons systems.
Analysis of data from cybersecurity tests conducted on DoD weapons systems from 2012 to 2017 found by using simple tools and techniques, malefactors could hijack systems and largely operate undetected because of basic vulnerabilities.
DoD researchers also interviewed cybersecurity officials, analyzing how the systems are protected and their responses to attacks.
The report cited "widespread examples of weaknesses in each of the four security objectives that cybersecurity tests normally examine: protect, detect, respond, and recover."
From National Public Radio
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