Fergie's Tech Blog

Military Hackers Turn To Commercial Electronic Attack Tools

David A. Fulghum and Robert Wall write on Aviation Week:

China’s integrated air defenses—based on cheap, sometimes stolen digital technology—are now considered potentially more threatening to the U.S. than Russia’s. The wholesale use of commercial products has made Chinese networks flexible, easy to upgrade and tough to exploit.

That opinion, rapidly taking hold in the U.S. electronic warfare community, is part of the tsunami of air defense ana­lysis following Israel’s demonstration of its ability to shut down Syria’s Russian-built air defenses long enough to conduct a bombing raid—and then allowed the radars to come back on in time to see the Israeli aircraft disappearing over the border.

China’s air defense expenditures are calculated by aerospace officials as only one-tenth of what’s invested by the U.S. The Chinese systems are affordable, in part, because of the regular use of stolen U.S. technology—described as “Cisco in Chinese,” by one specialist. The telecom companies that conduct and exploit the thefts are run by former People’s Liberation Army generals. The low cost allows rapid updating and proliferation of these defenses, which is one of the best ways to confound attack planners.

posted by Fergie @ 1/20/2008 09:50:00 PM