Hackers got to the Patriot missiles?

Foreign media got information that unnamed hackers were able to carry out a successful attack and send commands to the Patriot missiles made in the USA and used by the German army. Missile launchers were located on the Turkish-Syrian border.

According to the German magazine Behörden Spiegel , the NATO military noticed “inexplicable” orders that were remotely transferred to the missile complexes, consisting of six launchers and two radars.
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Despite the fact that the German government denied the incident, calling it “extremely unlikely” and citing lack of evidence, the press reports that the attack could have been carried out in two ways.

The first of these implies the use of an error in the real-time information exchange sensor between the launcher and the control system (Sensor-Shooter-Interoperability, SSI). Another attack vector could be the control chip controlling the missile guidance. In the end, hackers could not only gain unauthorized access to data, but also control rockets.

Experts interviewed by the media stated that such attacks are not fantastic. At the same time, the threat of unauthorized launching of rockets in this case is extremely low, said in a conversation with RT, the English security consultant Jonathan Schifreen (Jonathan Schifreen) said:

Such systems are not connected to public networks, and in order to launch a rocket, special confirmation codes are needed, which only a few people have. To launch or other serious manipulations with a rocket launcher, confirmation from two or three people is needed. I do not think that anything like this could happen, hacking such systems is extremely difficult. On the other hand, it is possible to obtain data on the location of the rocket launcher.

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There is no doubt that foreign intelligence is trying to hack such systems, and it is likely that the software used there has more than one vulnerability.

Former British MI5 agent Annie Machon (Annie Machon) told reporters that the software of the Patriot missiles created in the United States could have backdoors.

Even before the incident described by the press on the Syrian border, it was announced that Germany had plans to replace the Patriot missile systems with MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System) missiles used in Italy and the United States.

The incidents that led to the compromise of military systems, happened before - confirmation of this is contained in documents published by Edward Snowden. In particular, they report that the Chinese intelligence services managed to steal data about the American F-35 strike fighter.

The topic of safety of critical infrastructure, including in relation to military facilities, was raised at the PHDays V forum in May. Participants in the competition from Advantech (we wrote about it at Habré ) were to take control of the industrial control system associated with the rocket launcher model, and make a shot at the "secret object".