Hacking UK Trident: A Growing Threat | Hacker News Reader

Hacking UK Trident: A Growing Threat

basicint.org

Technology aside I find the scariest thing about trident to be the lack of codes in the PM's control. Everything needed to launch a nuke is already on the submarine, and it's only military discipline stopping it.

That is how all nuclear submarines work. Part of their role as deterrent is to be capable of delivering a response even if a sneak attack takes out the national leadership.

I thought the use of Permissive Action Link prevented this in the US, for example

Nope, naval nukes to not use PALs. Assuming a boat at a defcon level such that the keys are out of the safe you would need the captain and xo to agree and launch (assuming tacit agreement from weapons officer, comm, and most of the rest of the boat who could all in theory simply overpower someone trying to launch without valid orders or sabotage the necessary systems to prevent launch.)

I don't believe what you have written is true in the case of the US Navy, which parent was asking about. US SSBNs do indeed have PALs.

You are correct if you're talking about Britain: Royal Navy SSBN captains are able to launch missiles independent of government orders and there are no PALs involved in the UK nuclear deterrent (which is entirely submarine based).

This is the most authoritative source I can find right now; it's not a subject where it's easy to find a ton of verifiable information: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/trident-what-are-the-facts/

EDIT: For interest, the justification in Britain for leaving "full operational control" in the hands of submarine commanders is that the UK government is likely to be vaporized almost immediately after a hostile launch, there being such a short flight time from many hostile nations to the UK. The USA has more time to react, and a number of scares helped to swing political opinion in favor of mandatory PALs for submarines. Now, I have heard that there is in fact a way for a US SSBN crew to launch independently in the event of a verified destruction of the chain of command on shore, but as that verification is ultimately down to the command crew's judgement, it renders the PAL moot. This I could only find Quora answers about so take it with a pinch.

Aren't the only PALs on a US SSBN the launch keys? I realize that the devices themselves have anti-tamper PAL components, but once the safe is opened and the keys are out I was under the impression that the captain and xo could launch without any additional outside input. Happy to be wrong, but to the best of my (very limited) knowledge there is no need for an external authentication code to launch a sub nuke.

There's a code lock - the PAL - on US Tridents, not just the launch keys. Anecdotally and non-authoritatively I've heard that there are offline backup codes in a safe accessible to the command crew (which is the mechanism I refer to above).

"Last strike" is arguably a necessary component of a submarine deterrent since it means even a surprise decapitation strike carries the risk of a retaliation. It's certainly why the UK delegates launch authority to the captain (again, after a procedural verification of the destruction of the chain of command).

God, this stuff is frightening.

That's entirely the point of putting them on submarines to begin with. It's a very old problem; no sane person would murder millions of people even as a retaliatory action. So what's the point of having The Bomb at all?

The solution, as in Doctor Strangelove, is to take control out of your own hands - you put yourself in a position where you can say "I would never launch nuclear weapons, heavens no - but I can't speak for the commanders of my nuclear subs if their country is obliterated in a first strike. Who knows what they might do..."

I'm rather disappointed that Jeremy Corbyn doesn't seem to have appreciated this fact, as he is currently being raked over the coals unnecessarily for his entirely sensible public reluctance to murder millions of people. In fact you don't want someone who looks trigger-happy, as that incentivizes a first strike against you.

The only issues being that there is no real evidence that Wannacry diffusion is connected with machines running Windows 2000 or XP (where seemingly the malware doesn't even run) and seemingly (as stated in the El Reg article cited by detritus) the OS of the ship(s) are not connected in any way with the internet, so it would be hard for it to enter the system at all.

On the other hand..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/01/trident_nuclear_dete...

This is ridiculously scary proposition - that's all I can really say without getting too political/philosophical.

Why would people go after such a hard target when there are so many easier systems that could be hacked, such as land based military installations, nuclear power stations, airports (especially air traffic control), world finance etc?

It's probably not totally crazy that one day almost the entire UK NHS or even the US election could be susceptible to a cyber attack, then we'd be really screwed.

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