Even off equipment now in the hands of the Taliban will provide a wealth of information how the United States creates and uses weapons, writes Defense One.
China will probably be the ultimate winner of the two decades of the war in Afghanistan, the daily claims. The aircraft and armored vehicles left over from the US withdrawal will provide China with knowledge of how the US military is building and using some of its most important war tools. The Chinese military is expected to seize this unexpected opportunity to create and export new generations of weapons and tactics adapted to US vulnerabilities to client countries. This radical view has been expressed by several US military experts.
Even the relatively primitive command, control, and communications equipment found in vehicles left behind by the United States on runways and airports carries much information about the technology. These are specially crafted items that are protected from hacker attacks.
“The only reason we don't see any more attacks on military equipment at the moment is the veil of secrecy surrounding these systems,” said Josh Lospinoso, CEO of Shift5, a cybersecurity company.
Lospinoso spent ten years in the military conducting penetration tests on radios, small computers and other IT equipment commonly used in Afghanistan.
Radio and communications equipment remained on board the Afghan Air Force C-130 captured by the Taliban. The Pentagon has made sure the device is not working properly. But the enemy, with time and will, can break them down one by one.
“You now have some or all of the electronic components in this system and this is a representative lab; it is a platform for creating, testing and repeating cyberattacks, where an attacker could have had very difficult times, “said Lospinoso.
Georgina Shih, who spent five years at MITER and helped the Pentagon research and test new technologies, said the loss of key equipment “reveals everything we do in the US Department of Defense: our action plans, how we set things, how to protect them . This gives them unlimited time and access to search for vulnerabilities we may not even be aware of. “It's not just a Hummer.” It's not just a vehicle that takes you from point A to point B. This is a Humvee full of radios, technology, cryptosystems, everything we don't want our rivals to take over, “said Shi, now Chief Technology Officer at the Defense Fund's Transformation Innovation Lab. democracy.
Of particular concern are electronic countermeasures or ECMs, which are used to detect improvised explosive devices.
“Imagine the research and development that has been put into developing an ECM device to combat improvised explosive devices,” said Peter Christensen, former director of the U.S. military's national cyberspace. “Now our opponents have them.” They will have the software and hardware that is part of this system. But also develop the ability to defeat or reduce the effectiveness of these ECM devices. “
According to Shi's device, which was” demilitarized “or” deactivated, “as described by US officials, abandoned planes and vehicles can still reveal secrets.
Once an attacker gains physical control of a device, there is little to prevent it from detecting its vulnerabilities, and Shi says that there are always vulnerabilities.
In accordance with current purchasing procedures, most new protections are not tested for vulnerabilities until the end of the design process. Testers often spend too little time on extensive testing.