Hey Everyone, I was wondering, do you think most designers of military equipment consider counter measures against reverse engineering? Or are such designs sufficiently complicated and integrated enough that going out of your way to do so is unnecessary?
No, that's why they have export controls. For IC circuits, it is possible to encrypt the key like on 360 cpu. Suicide circuits as well. Most military gear is meant to be reliable, so expect pentium level components or older. Most planes or missiles used now were designed in the 1970's and 1980's. Just look at something like the tomahawk started in 1983... some upgrades to better gps. Platforms may be upgrade once or twice. They are reliable and radiation hardened. Rarely is it high end tech except in a few areas and then it's usually 100% custom stuff like in avionics.. custom ics would all be made stateside and even if uncapped you'd just understand the layout. I don't know if they would include on the chips all kinds of false circuitry. Most military gear is very insecure... you can watch predator drone video feed it is unencrypted... It's the gear made for spy agency that is the high tech stuff. Like the drone they crashed in Iran, it was caught by spoofing gps. You can buy russian GPS jammers cheaply... That is why they are moving past gps to new tech.
You sure the drone in Iran crashed due to GPS spoofing? I would have thought they would be using the military grade GPS system which is encrypted, and not the civilian bands. I thought the drone crashed due to lack of fuel and orders (do to being neglected too long).
Even the best of encryption can be broken if someone knows what they're doing. And if they get a hold of the key for the encryption method...
i saw a documentary about the leopard 2 tank. it was told, that the hardware for the communication encryption is sealed inside a box and if someone tries to open it, it will self-destruct (afaik overvolting the circuits), so that the enemy has no chance to get the hardware nor the encryption keys. So, long answer short: yes, there is some military equipment that has counter measures against reverse engineering
Also, you'd be surprised as to how much military tech is based on everyday stuff. Think of it this way. Military needs new tech, sees what they need in real world, decides to use it secretly, lies and says they developed "new tech" to keep the source secret, repackages to disguise it, adds security measures, deploys. That way if it does fall in wrong hands it will be destroyed by the counter measures or if they override them, it is something everyone already knows about. That's not to say all military things are like this but the more common stuff would be to save money. At least that is case for US armed forces...
Most designers of military equipment aren't going to talk about it, so trying to figure out what they were thinking is a moot point.
Export controls only go so far. You still can't account for what someone in the field may try. Regarding platform updates, I wouldn't say that....nor would I say all of the tech is severely outdated, least not what I've seen. A year ago I would have said the same thing, but now, working in this field, it's pretty damn amazing lol
Thing is - things like comm encryption or IFF systems are the only ones protected from tampering. Rest of those electronics are built for maximum reliability and easy disassemble/repairs. And yeah, electronic components used in military equipment mostly as old as mammoth shit. Crude and low-tech. But it works in conditions where your high end gadget will fail in a millisecond, or better to say will be broken in pieces. Same for space equipment - extremely expensive, because there's a people manually testing every resistor and solder joint, chips are expensive because of radiation shielding and higher amount of gold, platinum and stuff. Chips with same specs but designed for normal environment conditions will cost like two thousands.. for two tons. Military PC - just your normal PC (can be x86/ARM/MIPS-based) but in thick metallic case, with a bit better EM shielding, can have some hardware encryption board. And usually not something with high specs.
yeah i remember a while back, MOD (ministry of defense) / ex army laptops were being sold on ebay and they were just hardened / lower spec machines gel packed hdd's etc, i wanted one just for the novelty but didnt get one
