14 DAY TRIAL // Britain’s largest and most powerful warship ever, HMS Queen Elizabeth, has officially squeezed out of the dockyard for the very first time, but security experts are worried that it could soon become the preferred target of state-sponsored hackers because of the software it runs.
Even though it cost no less than 3.5 billion pounds (that’s about $4.46 billion), HMS Queen Elizabeth runs Windows XP, an operating system that Microsoft launched in 2001 and which no longer receives support since April 2014.
This isn’t the first time UK’s war machines are exposed to cyber-attacks because of old software, as the country’s Trident nuclear submarines are also running Windows XP, but every time, state officials said there’s no risk of hack because no connection exists when at sea.
In the case of HMS Queen Elizabeth, however, UK officials explain that the warship is equipped with an advanced hacking protection system and, what’s more, a team of security experts is also on-board to make sure that every attack is blocked.
“The ship is well designed and there has been a very, very stringent procurement train that has ensured we are less susceptible to cyber than most. With regards to someone wanting to jam my radio frequencies, we will have an escort and destroyers around us that will ward off people who try and impact our output. That’s normal routine business at sea,” Mark Deller, commander air on the Queen Elizabeth, was quoted as saying.
“We can always upgrade”
As for the reason why the vessel still runs Windows XP even though support was reached in April 2014, Deller explains that work on the warship started a long time ago when the operating system was still getting updates and security patches.
“When you buy a ship, you don’t buy it today, you bought it 20 years ago. So what we put on the shelf and in the spec is probably what was good then. The reality is, we are always designed with spare capacity, so we will always have the ability to modify and upgrade. So whatever you see in the pictures, I think you will probably find we will be upgrading to whatever we want to have in due course. It might have already happened but I can’t tell you,” he continued.
For what it’s worth, Windows XP received an emergency patch in May after ransomware called WannaCry and based on a vulnerability stolen from the NSA was targeting thousands of Windows systems across the world. The number of victims evolved at an alarming rate, with UK’s NHS itself also hit by the infection.
