M1 Abrams Tank Tested With New System That Prevents It From Being Hacked
Some of the most heavily armored vehicles in America's arsenal are virtually unarmored against cyber attacks.
By Brett Tingley February 8, 2022
The War Zone
M1 Abrams Tank Cybersecurity System
US Army/Peraton
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The U.S. Army’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center, GVSC, has announced a successful demonstration of a new system designed to defend ground vehicles against cyber attacks. Because a large portion of the service’s vehicle fleets were designed well before the advent of modern cyberattacks, their systems remain vulnerable to these threats. According to the Army's announcement, the demonstration proved “the need for robust cyber defensive technologies in legacy and future ground vehicle systems" in order to "ensure cyber survivability and augment force protection.”
The demonstration was part of an exercise known as Cyber Cyclone, which took place at Yuma Proving Ground in September 2021 as part of the larger Project Convergence ‘21 event. The Army announced the demonstration this week in a release. In the demonstration, an M1A2 Abrams tank was fitted with a 1553 Bus Defender system made by Peraton. The Bus Defender is an intrusion detection and prevention system that can defeat cyberattacks aimed at a platform’s data bus, a hardware subsystem that handles the transfer of data both in and out of associated systems. All transmissions between other military assets including satellites, off-board sensors, communication systems, weapons, unmanned vehicles, and more are handled by the data bus. The Department of Defense and NASA use the MIL-STD-1553 data bus, first developed in 1975.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44199/army-tests-system-that-prevents-m1-abrams-tank-from-being-hacked
