Are We Prepared For NexGen Cyber War?

by Monica Davis

Modern society can not exist without computers, data systems and networks. It also can’t exist without security systems to ensure that those systems aren’t compromised by hackers and terrorists.

Computer technology is not only changing society, but it is also changing how we wage war. The face of warfare is changing, and today, warfare is often more about hacking into an enemy computer network to shut down power grids, communication systems, or disrupt air traffic control, than fielding soldiers on a battlefield.

Military organizations around the world are beefing up cyberwarfare tactics, training cyber soldiers to fight wars that only exist across widespread computer systems. So, when a private pilot demonstrated a way to compromise in-flight computer systems, he quickly attracted the attention of government aviation agencies around the world. 

Aviation agencies in Europe and the US are keen to quiz a hacker who targeted flight deck computers.

Security researcher Hugo Teso was able to “hijack” the systems to feed false navigation information to a simulated jet that made it change course.

Mr Teso built his simulator using spare parts from real jets for sale on the eBay auction site.

Authorities say actual flight computers are not compromised by his work but want to find out more. MOREHERE

Mr. Teso told reporters that he has spent the last 4 years analyzing various aviation computers and data systems. He was surprised at how easily he could penetrate these systems. ”I expected them to have security issues but I did not expect them to be so easy to spot,” he said. “I thought I would have to fight hard to get into them but it was not that difficult.” MOREHERE

Teso’s discoveries, when combined with alleged Chinese and North Korean cyber attacks on Western computer networks, are changing the face of war.  But that’s nothing new.  

AT THE height of the cold war, in June 1982, an American early-warning satellite detected a large blast in Siberia. A missile being fired? A nuclear test? It was, it seems, an explosion on a Soviet gas pipeline. The cause was a malfunction in the computer-control system that Soviet spies had stolen from a firm in Canada. They did not know that the CIA had tampered with the software so that it would “go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds,” according to the memoirs of Thomas Reed, a former air force secretary. The result, he said, “was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space.” MOREHERE

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