A 50-person Australian defense contractor leaked blueprints for the F-35 fighter, P-8 surveillance plane, and C-130 transport. Security expert Robert Siciliano says the breach could let nation-states or criminals sabotage or copy military hardware, and that proper safeguards could have prevented it.
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Thank you, Liz, very much.
One of our defense contractors hacked. The thief now has secret data on top U.S. weapons technologies, even our F-35 fighters. We're bringing in expert Robert Siciliano on what kind of danger this hack puts us in after this. Welcome back. Top U.S. technology hacked. An unidentified hacker now has information on weapons and U.S. aircraft such as F-35 fighters, P-8 surveillance planes, and C-130 aircraft. Here's what happened. The hackers hit a small Australian defense subcontractor back in July of last year in a compromise that was, quote, extensive and extreme. Defense stocks closing the day in the green. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon all ending higher. Northrop Grumman closing up more than a percent. Let's bring in Hotspot Shield security expert Robert Siciliano. Robert, how bad is this hack?
It's, uh, well, as far as, um, the security of our nation, one of the worst. Uh, the fact that, um, this is a small mom-and-pop with 50 employees, uh, and they had access to such sensitive information and little to no security on their network means that, uh, our nation's infrastructure has been compromised in that sense. Uh, getting access to, uh, fighter pilot blueprints and so forth.
Could it put us in danger back at home?
Well, without a doubt. So when you have inside access to how these— how the hardware and software operates in regards to our military planes and so forth, then a criminal, a nation-state, can remotely compromise those devices. Say there's a wireless connection to them. They could penetrate them. They could include malware on them. They could find out how they operate and they could reproduce them and use them against us.
Robert, who do we think did it?
Well, I mean, it could be anyone really. It could be China, could be Russia, could be anyone, uh, anybody that has a grudge against us or anybody that wants to sell that information to any of those nation states.
What's the next step after, you know, secrets like this is stolen? I mean, what could be the fallout here?
Well, it's, it's up to the Department of Homeland Security and military to look at the data that has been compromised and essentially reverse engineer the process in regards to how could that information be used against us. So if they determine that there's inside information that nobody's supposed to know that could be used to, say, take down a plane or to potentially build a system that could be used against us, then the US government, US military, is going to need to counteract that.
Can this sort of hack be prevented?
Well, of course it can. Uh, there's no such thing as 100% security, but something like this where you have a small mom-and-pop that had this much information, uh, and little to no security, yes, that could have been prevented.
Thank you, Robert Siciliano. We love having you on. Come back soon.
