Trident may be hacked by the end of 2018

Nov 29, 2015 11:45 GMT  ·  By

Des Browne, former British Defence Secretary, is quoted by The Guardian as saying that there's no guarantee that Britain's Trident nuclear program will be safe from hacking in the next three years.

Mr. Browne bases his comments on a report put together by the Defense Science Board of the US Department of Defense, published in 2013.

The report warned that, without timely upgrades, the defensive systems of the US and its allies would become susceptible to attacks in the next five years.

The reasoning behind this warning takes into account Moore's Law for hardware capability evolution, which is said to double every two years.

The defensive measures put in place to protect the US and other nuclear programs in NATO-allied countries will become outdated, thanks to the evolution of hardware and software solutions.

Mr. Browne, who served as UK's Defence Secretary between 2006 and 2008, says that Britain is stagnating on this front and that, without quick actions, the British PM may find his nuclear program compromised by skilled Chinese or Russian hackers.

The UK is prioritizing surveillance instead of cyber-defense

David Cameron has previously acted on this report and has made it a priority for his country to upgrade its Trident nuclear program.

The UK government agreed to allocate £3.2 billion ($4.8 billion / €4.54 billion) to cybersecurity defences, but according to The Guardian, most of the funds will go to the GHCQ and its cyber-espionage capabilities. Mr. Browne was of the same opinion as the Guardian, thinking the government has not allocated sufficient funds to the Trident program.

Earlier this month, we reported on a multitude of cyber-attacks on manufacturers that were involved in the planning of Australia's next nuclear-capable submarine. This comes to prove that even smaller world powers are targeted with massive attacks, so UK's nuclear arms system may see a lot more than 30 to 40 cyber-attacks per night as the submarine manufacturers were reporting in those incidents.