Hackers Pose Real Nuclear Threat: Former US Commander

We have entered into a dangerous global nuclear phase. According to the AP, a former US Commander has advised to take nuclear missiles off high alert.

Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off high alert could keep a possible cyberattack from starting a nuclear war, a former commander of U.S. nuclear forces says, but neither country appears willing to increase the lead-time to prepare the weapons for launch.

What says Mr. Obama?

Apparently the nukes "needed to be ready and effective and able to prosecute the mission at any point in time."

Prosecute the mission? Never heard the word "prosecute" used in the potential launching of certain death to someone, somewhere.

An example of the high alert level of U.S. nuclear weapons is the land-based nuclear force. These are the 450 Minuteman 3 missiles that are kept ready, 24/7, to launch from underground silos within minutes after receiving a presidential order.

So, what about the hacking part?

Cartwright is the lead author of a report published Wednesday by the Global Zero Commission, an international group co-founded by a former Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer, Bruce Blair, now a research scholar at Princeton. The report calls for a phased approach to taking U.S. and Russian missiles off high alert, with 20 percent of them off launch-ready alert within one year and 100 percent within 10 years, under a legal or political agreement.The report argues that lowering the alert levels should be preceded by both Russia and the U.S. eliminating a strategy known as a "launch on warning" — being prepared to launch nuclear missiles rapidly after early warning satellites and ground radar detect incoming warheads. It says this presents an unacceptable level of nuclear risk, and argues that vulnerability to cyberattack against the warning systems or the missile control systems is "a new wild card in the deck."

"At the brink of conflict, nuclear command and warning networks around the world may be besieged by electronic intruders whose onslaught degrades the coherence and rationality of nuclear decision-making," the report says.

So, ATS, do we take our 400 Minutemen 3 Missiles off of high alert, or do we risk cyber attack to set off WWIII?

Source

No one should have the capability of wiping out innocent people.

a reply to: Night Star

And yet they have since the emergence of man.

Aren't all high value military assets air-gapped to prevent this type of thing? Don't they still need 2 mechanical key turns before they can be launched? That's what they always show in docu's and movies.

My understanding is that it takes 2 people.The president and someone authorized by Congress.
Also there is a PAL locking system to stop just anyone firing them. The president has an aid who carries a briefcase with the codes to this system.Apparently Kennedy initiated this system.From what I understand Strategic Air Command (military).Took their time implementing this security. Unfortunately its down to 2 individuals who decide the fate of the world.
Plus whoever wrote the codes. Begs the question.Who did write the codes? Btw I understand SAC Kept the code at 00000000 for 20 yrs.

well considering most of our nuke launch computers
would still lose a war with Matthew Brodrick
on a Tandy 1000, I'd say yeah it's a worry.

If that is how they launch a nuclear retaliation..it makes sense needing two people.

If you just sentenced millions of people to die, you're going to NEED someone who shared the experience for psychological reasons.

Another positive would be that both people have to agree with the desolation of a naton. But, I would imagine that if it is a random person, who simply follows orders, this idea fails.

Jeff Goldbloom should hold the key.

Please tell me the key thing isn't how they do it. It has to be some sort of mission impossible gear that requires a complex hand shake with a virtual presence.

The two keys are gone. The president shall appoint the person from congress. But after thought its up to the little guy obeying a command in a bunker somewhere.

There is absolutely ZERO reason for any organization in charge of any Sensitive systems to have that system connected to the public internet. NONE. It should be A felony. They can easily make their own dedicated communications trunks and handle it as an INTRANET not internet. Especially Governments. and if a local jurisdiction cannot afford it then the Federal Government should step in and get it done. This is the sort of thing the founders would say is a collective interest appropriate for the federal government to handle.

Systems controlling train switches, traffic lights, ATC systems, Electrical power plants and switches, military infrastructure, water and water treatment plants, things of that nature do not do not do not need to be able to cruise for porn on the internet.

And if big Corps had any sense they too would air gap everything from personal data to industrial secrets and propitiary information.

Sorry, there is no fn way you can hack into a nuke site. Get real general bsr. The only threat from the internet is knowledge and they know it.

Did anyone see the FCC guys face when they passed the control over to them? Grinning from ear to ear.

a reply to: Ultralight

From my view as an experiencer of UFOs, I take as true and serious various reports from former military people that UFOs have hovered over and deactivated and/or caused "alerts" on our ICBMs and have done similar exercises on Russian systems. The most serious accounts report that as the UFO hovered over the silos, the missiles began to prepare themselves for launch. Now, if that does not scare the devil out of you, nothing will.

I take those displays of incredible abilities of the UFO folk as open-ended, implicit warnings that need little examination for value. That view would be held by leaders both in the US and in Russia. (We can assume that any country with nuclear missiles also will have been warned.)

Our leaders will never give us any direct hint that they command worthless machines of death, or better yet, would they simply agree to decommission them wholesale. Such weapons are all part of the bluff, the facade, the dance of earthly powers around one another in a quest for dominance.

The announcement by a former commander of such weapons that they should be taken off-line is probably simply following orders to make such an announcement. Probably, that actual act has already been done. Nuclear battles between earth powers have no standing when the equation becomes complicated with the inclusion of an off-world power that gives notice that it won't stand for such foolishness.

originally posted by: thov420
Aren't all high value military assets air-gapped to prevent this type of thing? Don't they still need 2 mechanical key turns before they can be launched? That's what they always show in docu's and movies.

Yes they couldnt directly launch a missile. But they could get sneaky and hack the satellite making it seem like a launch occurred. But they are encrypted communications and wouldn't be easy to hack. And ;if you took control of it im sure they would notice.

originally posted by: thov420
Aren't all high value military assets air-gapped to prevent this type of thing? Don't they still need 2 mechanical key turns before they can be launched? That's what they always show in docu's and movies.

Yes they couldnt directly launch a missile. But they could get sneaky and hack the satellite making it seem like a launch occurred. But they are encrypted communications and wouldn't be easy to hack. And ;if you took control of it im sure they would notice.

a reply to: Mandroid7

Research the close call toward WWIII back during Cuban Missile Crisis.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
There is absolutely ZERO reason for any organization in charge of any Sensitive systems to have that system connected to the public internet.

I completely and entirely agree. I don't understand how such a system can be placed onto the same that we are all using, the same system that we're using to communicate these messages. I know it's on a higher level than ourselves and that the security is meant to be too advanced for anyone to access, but the fact is that there is no system that is truly invulnerable. Systems like these need to be on and in their own enclosed severs on location at the base. The only issue at this stage is that taking the system entirely off-line and onto it's own local system is that if the location of the system is compromised internally; externally there would be no way to stop anyone, doing anything in there.