Trust No One: Pentagon Ramps Up Secret Programs, Citing Fear of 'Hackers'

[mick silver]

Trust No One: Pentagon Ramps Up Secret Programs, Citing Fear of 'Hackers'© Flickr/ US Air Force (http://bit.ly/1Fl5GMs)



US (http://sputniknews.com/us/)21:37 10.01.2016(updated 21:53 10.01.2016) Get short URL
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The truth is out there, but the Pentagon has decided to classify new projects in fear of those who may find it, a move that policy analysts say adds unnecessary costs.
The US Department of Defense may increase the number of programs it is keeping classified, Defense News reported (http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/industry/2016/01/09/fearful-hacks-pentagon-considers-more-classified-programs/78443830/) on Saturday.
Defense officials claim that the move is to prevent hackers from accessing data regarding new projects such as the Long Range Strike-Bomber. Critical analysts say that the new measure adds costs without creating real security guarantees.
"In general, the department is moving toward a posture which tries harder to protect our information," the Pentagon's acquisition chief Frank Kendall told Defense News.

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The policy has been used for the new strike-bomber, which does not disclose the parts manufacturers or the costs of the project, making oversight more difficult."We’re trying to control costs. If you over-classify, how do you arrange to go to meetings? You suddenly impose classified facilities and expenses, and it could add costs to programs we’re trying to keep lean," former Air Force official Rebecca Grant told Defense News.
Another issue for defense manufacturers is the requirement for employees to get security clearances, an expensive and time-consuming process for even large firms.
According to Defense News, the Chinese military industry has unveiled the "JF-31, a clear copy of the F-35 joint strike fighter," and that US defense manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin have been hacked in the past.





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[mick silver]

Pentagon’s Terrorism Techies Want X-Ray Vision and Batman Armor© AFP 2015/ STAFF



US (http://sputniknews.com/us/)00:55 09.01.2016(updated 01:27 09.01.2016) Get short URL
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The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) last month released its new broad agency announcement, outlining the various gadgets and technology the office is looking to buy or build.

The following is an outline of CTTOS’ requests, as compiled by Defense One, which says the wish list “reads like a prop list for a Marvel Comics movie – and yet they’re also technologies that could eventually make their way into wider commercial use.”http://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/images/103277/92/1032779207.jpg
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A helmet that gives bomb techs Terminator vision
CTTSO wants a voice-activated “bomb suit helmet heads up display.” Basically, it’s a helmet that displays key pieces of information to the wearer in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the task at hand. Those bits could include details of the explosive device, radiological or chemical alerts, even the bomb tech’s heart and respiration rate, gathered from body sensors.
Similarly, the office wants a hands-free “augmented reality” navigation system for driving. Think Google Glass for driving a getaway car.
FitBit for soldiers under fire

CTTSO wants “wireless health monitors” that soundlessly broadcast biophysical information about the wearer to a commander for at least six hours. The office also wants wearable chemical and biological sensors as well.http://cdn5.img.sputniknews.com/images/102571/72/1025717286.jpg
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FitBit for cars and trucks
“Currently the only status communications come directly from the courier, leaving command center personnel unaware if the courier has been captured or injured and/or the controlled materials compromised,” the announcement reads. The office wants an automatic “vehicle intrusion detection system” that can collect and transmit thermal, motion, and other data.
A portable device that can track a gunshot to its source

“If subjected to incoming small arms fire, security forces gain an advantage when provided timely information regarding the firing source (bearing, elevation, range),” the announcement reads. Gunshot tracking systems already exist, but they’re big and generally immobile. CTTOS wants a system that can fit onto vehicles to give tactical teams an immediate sense of who is shooting at them from where.http://cdn4.img.sputniknews.com/images/101588/18/1015881840.jpg
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Batman armor
CTTOS wants what they are calling a tactical standalone plate: “a lighter, thinner armor solution would enable greater mobility, lower visible signature, and the opportunity to carry other equipment due to the weight reduction” – but still stop an armor-piercing 7.62 x 51 mm bullet.
Tunnel bots and tunnel threat detection software

CTTOS wants to put tunneling and snake robots to find and scope out underground passages on the US border. In addition, it wants software to analyze the “mechanically-bored tunneling threat,” as well as X-ray scanners to “locate tunnel entrances/exits and other man-made voids … and drug and weapon caches concealed in the floors and walls of buildings and underground municipal infrastructure.”http://cdn4.img.sputniknews.com/images/102263/97/1022639795.jpg
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A laser vision system that can recognize a person by their chest shape from 200 meters away
“Laser doppler vibrometry,” bounces harmless laser beams off a target to produce a digital picture of the surface. CTTOS wants a laser doppler vibrometer sensitive enough to positively identify a person by his or her upper torso “unique cardiological signature” in 60 seconds from more than a football field away.
A search engine that will tell you if a specific person is breaking the law
CTTOS wants to create a “Foreign Criminal Law Analytical Capability” – a searchable database that compares the behavior of a particular person to “relevant foreign criminal statutes/regulations.” You can also look up how willing a given government might be to enforce those regulations.





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[keehah]

vice.com: Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios (https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3n3j/backdoor-in-police-radios-tetra-burst)
July 24, 2023

A group of cybersecurity researchers has uncovered what they believe is an intentional backdoor in encrypted radios used by police, military, and critical infrastructure entities around the world. The backdoor may have existed for decades, potentially exposing a wealth of sensitive information transmitted across them, according to the researchers.

While the researchers frame their discovery as a backdoor, the organization responsible for maintaining the standard pushes back against that specific term, and says the standard was designed for export controls which determine the strength of encryption. The end result, however, are radios with traffic that can be decrypted using consumer hardware like an ordinary laptop in under a minute.

“There's no other way in which this can function than that this is an intentional backdoor,” Jos Wetzels, one of the researchers from cybersecurity firm Midnight Blue, told Motherboard in a phone call.

The research is the first public and in-depth analysis of the TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) standard (https://www.etsi.org/technologies/tetra#:~:text=Standards-,Introduction,Public%20Safety) in the more than 20 years the standard has existed. Not all users of TETRA-powered radios use the specific encryption algorithim called TEA1 which is impacted by the backdoor. TEA1 is part of the TETRA standard approved for export to other countries. But the researchers also found other, multiple vulnerabilities across TETRA that could allow historical decryption of communications and deanonymization. TETRA-radio users in general include national police forces and emergency services in Europe; military organizations in Africa; and train operators in North America and critical infrastructure providers elsewhere...

[Jos Wetzels, one of the researchers] told Motherboard the team has been disclosing these vulnerabilities to impacted parties so they can be fixed for more than a year and a half. That included an initial meeting with Dutch police in January 2022, a meeting with the intelligence community later that month, and then the main bulk of providing information and mitigations being distributed to stakeholders. NLnet Foundation, an organization which funds “those with ideas to fix the internet,” financed the research.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), an organization that standardizes technologies across the industry, first created TETRA in 1995. Since then, TETRA has been used in products, including radios, sold by Motorola, Airbus, and more. Crucially, TETRA is not open-source. Instead, it relies on what the researchers describe in their presentation slides as “secret, proprietary cryptography,” meaning it is typically difficult for outside experts to verify how secure the standard really is.

...Ordinarily, radios using TEA1 used a key of 80-bits. But Wetzels said the team found a “secret reduction step” which dramatically lowers the amount of entropy the initial key offered. An attacker who followed this step would then be able to decrypt intercepted traffic with consumer-level hardware and a cheap software defined radio dongle.

“This is a trivial type of attack that fully breaks the algorithm. That means an attacker can passively decrypt everything in almost real time. And it's undetectable, if you do it passively, because you don't need to do any weird interference stuff,” Wetzels said.


Not all current TETRA-radio customers will use TEA1, and some may have since moved onto TETRA’s other encryption algorithms.