Wireless Hacking In Flight: Air Force Demos Cyber EC-130

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/09/wireless-hacking-in-flight-air-force-demos-cyber-ec-130/

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
Breaking Defense
September 15, 2015

NATIONAL HARBOR: Matthew Broderick in his basement, playing Wargames over 
a landline, is still the pop culture archetype of a hacker. But as 
wireless networks became the norm, new-age cyber warfare and traditional 
electronic warfare are starting to merge. Hackers can move out of the 
basement to the sky. In a series of experiments, the US Air Force has 
successfully modified its EC-130 Compass Call aircraft, built to jam enemy 
transmissions, to attack enemy networks instead.

“We’ve conducted a series of demonstrations,” said Maj. Gen. Burke Wilson, 
commander of the 24th Air Force, the service’s cyber operators. “Lo and 
behold! Yes, we’re able to touch a target and manipulate a target, [i.e.] 
a network, from an air[craft].”

What’s more, Wilson told reporters at the Air Force Association conference 
here, this flying wireless attack can “touch a network that in most cases 
might be closed” to traditional means. While he didn’t give details, many 
military networks around the world are deliberately disconnected from the 
Internet (“air-gapped”) for better security. You can try to get an agent 
or dupe to bring a virus-infected thumb drive to work, as reportedly 
happened with Stuxnet’s penetration of the Iranian nuclear program, but 
that takes time and luck.

You unlock a lot more virtual doors if you can just hack a network 
wirelessly from the air. Israeli aircraft using BAE’s Suter system 
reportedly did just this to Syrian air defenses in 2007’s Operation 
Orchard, and the Navy is interested in the capability, but this is the 
first I’ve heard an Air Force general discuss it. Digital AESA radar can 
do much the same thing, as we’ve reported about the F-35.

[...]

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