Security

US War Robots Targeted by Computer Viruses

How about controlling a robot from your laptop?

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

8th of November 2007, 09:41 GMT

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OK, this sounds pretty funny but it is actually a very serious piece of news which concerns our security (not on the web, the real one). Read this: the US army is afraid that some of its war

robots such as helicopters, tanks and other killing machines equipped with software technologies can be controlled by anyone who manages to install a malicious code line inside the installed applications. Sure, you might laugh saying that we're talking about the US military system which can easily protect a software solution designed to work on their robots but imagine that such a virus could be inserted even from early development stages. According to The Register, the US Defense Science Board is worried that its robots can turn against them due to malicious codes included in the software.

Here's an interesting scenario: two 10-year-old tech-savvy kids, playing hide and seek with two heavily armed helicopters on the US streets. 'Bang bang, you're dead!" one of them shouts while a building goes down. Please excuse my imagination but if the American military system is afraid of its own war machines, is this planet safe to live on?

Getting back to the news, the army has even a plan to avoid malicious content installed inside its software technologies. According to the same source mentioned above, the government could name some undercover agents to buy the applications from the software companies so they wouldn't know that their programs could be installed on the army's killing robots.

Imagine a 40-year-old man going to a software company to buy a tank software. "Good afternoon, I want to buy an application to guide the missiles installed on a tank. Do you designed such a tool?" he first asks. "Of course we do!" the software company replies. "How much is it?" the man continues. "It's only $2 billion," the firm official quickly states. "But what do you plan to do with it?" "Well, it's for... my kid! He just wants to play with his friends!"

This would be one good scenario to trick the software companies when going out to buy such an application for the army's war robots.

TAGS:

army | virus | malware | helicopter

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