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Norwegian F-35 Sending Sensitive Data Back to Lockheed Martin (2018)

173 points by dsego 7y ago

asaddhamani 7y ago
Why do these sites have to implement smooth scrolling - for a blog of all things? I don't understand what goes through their heads
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  It's annoying, but there was this fad a few years ago and many websites did it, and probably this one was designed at that time.
tandem_bike 7y ago
The title makes the data collection sounds sinister, but this is just a case of a company wanting to make the best product possible. It's necessary to collect data to improve systems. Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed. In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?
- stirlo 7y ago
  When that company is foreign and may have different interests to that of the country which bought the product it is a problem
- orbital-decay 7y ago
  Shortsightedness aside, it doesn't really matter what the intentions are, certainly not for the military.
- mrighele 7y ago
  I give for granted that those data will be shared with US military. In any case the company is free to collect data from its own planes, not those that it already sold
- close04 7y ago
  Now say the exact same thing but referring to Huawei. How did that sound to the whole world, and especially to the US? This isn't your thermostat sending temperature data to the manufacturer, it's a war plane sending critical information that the owner of the plane wants to keep secret.
  - JohnStrangeII 7y ago
    To be fair, I cannot imagine any nation to sell a current-generation hi tech stealth fighter jet to foreign countries without hiding some kill switch somewhere in the firmware. I always thought this is somehow implied and that countries who fear to become the enemy of former allies diversify their weapon systems appropriately. At least, that's what I would do if I was in charge.
    - close04 7y ago
      We more or less know this concept to be a fact since the Snowden leaks. Alliances are very fluid things and it was already revealed that the US had infiltrated power and utilities companies in Europe and Japan and prepared kill switches in case they are needed in a conflict. I imagine this is the general practice to make sure your own tech is not used against you. I am also not surprised that some people find it perfectly acceptable when coming from one side, and unacceptable when coming from another. Reminds me of this: https://pics.onsizzle.com/nationalis-our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes-our-glorious-leader-30708097.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/nationalis-our-blessed-homeland-th...
  - tandem_bike 7y ago
    The difference is that Norway and the US are liberal democracies and allies. China, quite the opposite. In fact, Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed. In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?
darkhorn 7y ago
I think Patriots do the same thing. But not S-400s.
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  That sounds overly optimistic.
- 420codebro 7y ago
  The jerkoff-level lovefest for the S-400 on Reddit and HN is pretty hilarious. Ya, Russia is the straight arrow. USA is the crooked bitch. Keep those mental gymnastics up, bruh.
est31 7y ago
This reminds me of Windows 10 being used in countless non-US governments even though it has telemetry enabled.
- csomar 7y ago
  > you get calls from the US ambassador and it's not just economic reasons... Do you have details/links about that.
  - est31 7y ago
    I can't find any sources about it any more but I vaguely remember reading about it. I'm sorry. As I can't find it, it certainly wasn't covered by big press. I'll remove that part of the comment to be on the safe side. It's not what my comment was supposed to be mainly about anyway. The main part of my comment was more to point out that this is a pattern: the USA is supplier of a major amount of technology that lends itself very well to mass surveillance and the western world uses it. The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer nations.
    - csomar 7y ago
      What you are saying basically (if I got it right) is that US ambassadors are in some way threatening the target country if they move out of a potential spying system. That's quite a statement and more like wikileaks material.
    - taneq 7y ago
      > The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer nations. I dunno how unique that chance is any more. The whole world runs so on hardware made in China which could be compromised to do pretty much anything.
- kebman 7y ago
  Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) have campaigns from time-to-time where they highlight stuff like that to Norwegian state owned institutions, counties and municipalities.
kebman 7y ago
This article is over a year old. June 4th 2018. Norwegian blogs and press wrote about similar conserns already back in 2017. Not sure why this is pushed to the top at HN now :p
mytailorisrich 7y ago
One has to do wonder why a country would even consider buying a foreign plane that does this... Data should be under the control and scrutiny of the owner of the plane, who would pass on only what they are happy to.
- yyyk 7y ago
  Because developing good warplanes is extremely expensive and difficult. Also using same equipment as your allies has advantages - can secure external parts supply during a war, foreign planes can easily use your fields, etc. Of course, buying foreign planes comes with risks as well - parts supply might be embargoed, other countries will know something about your plane, etc. Judging by Norway's likely adversary (Russia), in all likelihood the risks were judged to be small compared to the advantages of using the best available plane from a country (US) usually not in good terms with Russia.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Because you're not going to use weapons against the nation that you bought them from.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    If you look to history, this really is not the case. Part of UK military strategy from the beginning of empire to the present day, is to sell arms to the people that you end up invading.
    - blattimwind 7y ago
      Meanwhile America made and sold a lot of guns into the middle east that are now used to kill Americans (among other people).
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Funny story: in the 80s the Iraqis were our allies and we (the British) sold them a bunch of kit, including their camouflage uniforms. In the first Gulf War happened and the British forces deployed in regular temperate camo. Everyone assumed it was because the supply chain was incompetent but the real story was it was too risky to fight in the same kit as the Republican Guard!
strooper 7y ago
I have seen the army in my country to emphasize on having total control on each and every equipment they have. They boast on being able to completely disassemble and reassemble all the mechanical war machines. I wonder how that works for software heavy war equipment, such as F-35. Does the seller provide full source code and control (and probably training?) over modification of the software? Do they agree on the paper only that the buyer can never get to use those weapons against the seller? Or, do they set those policies right inside the control units of those weapons? If the seller country have significant control on the control units of the war instruments sold to another country, and if the seller country is able to update/modify/ control/restrict devices over the air, won't that make the buyer country just an outpost of the seller country?
- wil421 7y ago
  In the case of new fighter jets. Absolutely not. Other countries do not get the full packages either. There are some parts they likely take out or give them slightly inferior parts.
  - secfirstmd 7y ago
    As far as I remember there was information released about the French having our backdoors into radar systems it sold. I am sure most countries do something like that but this time the for caught.
- nradov 7y ago
  F-35 source code is only available to a limited subset of trusted allies. Mainly the UK, but it appears that a few other countries such as Israel have at least partial source code and the ability to build custom branches.
  - no-dr-onboard 7y ago
    Doubtful. DoD/DoE contractors and manufacturers retain a large portion of military contracted IP material. For example, CNWDI in the nuclear world does not allow a anyone in the military access/knowledge portions of bombs/warheads below the maintenance plates. Sandia/LLNL/LANL keeps a (literal) tight lid on that knowledge, much less the very physical appearance. If the same schema were applied to airframes, it’s likely that Lockheed and NG retain rights to the manufacturers specific IP, which would include the source code to any avionics packages.
wil421 7y ago
It probably does a lot more than that. It’s alway been rumored some US military tech could suddenly be turned “off” in the event of a war. I couldn’t imagine a situation that would put Norway and the US on opposite sides. Since the military allows Norway to get F-35s they probably agree.
- ginko 7y ago
  I have the feeling that if there were ever a war between major powers breaking out, the first thing that would happen is that a large chunk of military equipment and critical infrastructure on both sides would get bricked pretty much immediately.
  - auslander 7y ago
    And its financial system cut off. Like US disconnected Iranian banks from SWIFT, and there is no way today to bypass US financial system for international payments.
- harry8 7y ago
  you wouldn't like to bet that the US are the only ones capable of turning it off, either.
  - wil421 7y ago
    “Off” in quotes. I bet it’s more like a software license. “you missed your 60 day update from Lockheed, your jet will stop working”
    - p_l 7y ago
      They fail to be fully operational after 30 days without connection to Lockheed servers, which is a problem even for USA because the connection is bandwidth intensive.
  - 14 7y ago
    Reading your comment I pictured Geohot attempting to jailbreak an f35. It made me wonder can you brick an f35?
stunt 7y ago
> “Due to national considerations, there is a need for a filter where the user nations can exclude sensitive data from the data stream that is shared by the system with the manufacturer Lockheed Martin,” Gjemble ter. > “Norway has entered into a partnership with Italy to jointly finance the procurement and operation of a laboratory where we can enter nationally sensitive data, as we currently do on F-16,” Gjemble said.
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
Apparently, in Austria, Eurofighter jets can't start until an NSA contractor on base types in an ignition key[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194 >In order for the 15 Eurofighters to start, Austria's federal army paid 1.5 million euros over three years to a private US security company. Now, the costs for those two "civilians" stationed at the Zeltweg airbase have been confirmed, who have to allow every start with the current US-"Crypto-Keys" for navigation and friend or foe identification. The ministry of defense denies that the two Americans from a not named US company are NSA contractors. They claim the jets would fly without the keys but without encrypted navigation and communication. He also mentions the same situation for Sweden and Switzerland.
- rjsw 7y ago
  Sweden and Switzerland don't fly Eurofighter jets. They are also not members of NATO so I'm not surprised that they can only get NATO IFF codes under restrictions. No idea what is going on with Austria. EDIT: Austria isn't a member of NATO.
  - bobowzki 7y ago
    Are we paying for these codes in Sweden? Would be quite interested to learn more about this.
    - dogma1138 7y ago
      For the codes directly no, for contractors with sufficient clearance for handling the keys yes. You can’t have it both ways as in want to interoperate with NATO forces as well as being covered by NATO CAPs and not be a member of NATO.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    What restrictions do you think Sweden has with regards to NATO IFF codes?
    - deleted 7y ago
otakucode 7y ago
I'm curious about the actual communication here. Does each plane have a satellite uplink or something? If they do, I would expect that they would be configured to use Norways military satellite comms network. I'm not sure how or why that network would be able to contact Lockheed. So are there multiple communications systems? What portion of them are military and what portion, if any, transit the public Internet? Lockheed might own their own communication satellites, I'm not sure, but I really don't think they have carte blanche to use the US military communications networks for their own products. Details might be sensitive or classified so I'll probably just be kept wondering, but the mechanics of the actual physical communication of data aren't clear to me.
- o-__-o 7y ago
  Thank you for wondering out loud, your thoughts have been noted
- p_l 7y ago
  A horribly shitty software package called ALIS is required to operate F-35,this software communicates from ground facilities to Lockheed servers. Having dealt with the output of the part of Lockheed that makes logistical software, I say run for the hills.
a3n 7y ago
We've been carrying spy devices in our pockets. Now spy devices carry us.
mrtksn 7y ago
They only need to switch it to airplane mode! Kidding aside, the concerns over the possibility for such actions were the primary reasons why the Turkish public was totally O.K. with being expelled from the F-35 program.
kwhitefoot 7y ago
Is anyone genuinely surprised at this?

173 points by dsego 7y ago

Why do these sites have to implement smooth scrolling - for a blog of all things? I don't understand what goes through their heads

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
It's annoying, but there was this fad a few years ago and many websites did it, and probably this one was designed at that time.

tandem_bike 7y ago

The title makes the data collection sounds sinister, but this is just a case of a company wanting to make the best product possible. It's necessary to collect data to improve systems. Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed. In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?

stirlo 7y ago
When that company is foreign and may have different interests to that of the country which bought the product it is a problem
orbital-decay 7y ago
Shortsightedness aside, it doesn't really matter what the intentions are, certainly not for the military.
mrighele 7y ago
I give for granted that those data will be shared with US military. In any case the company is free to collect data from its own planes, not those that it already sold
close04 7y ago
Now say the exact same thing but referring to Huawei. How did that sound to the whole world, and especially to the US? This isn't your thermostat sending temperature data to the manufacturer, it's a war plane sending critical information that the owner of the plane wants to keep secret.
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  To be fair, I cannot imagine any nation to sell a current-generation hi tech stealth fighter jet to foreign countries without hiding some kill switch somewhere in the firmware. I always thought this is somehow implied and that countries who fear to become the enemy of former allies diversify their weapon systems appropriately. At least, that's what I would do if I was in charge.
  - close04 7y ago
    We more or less know this concept to be a fact since the Snowden leaks. Alliances are very fluid things and it was already revealed that the US had infiltrated power and utilities companies in Europe and Japan and prepared kill switches in case they are needed in a conflict. I imagine this is the general practice to make sure your own tech is not used against you. I am also not surprised that some people find it perfectly acceptable when coming from one side, and unacceptable when coming from another. Reminds me of this: https://pics.onsizzle.com/nationalis-our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes-our-glorious-leader-30708097.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/nationalis-our-blessed-homeland-th...
- tandem_bike 7y ago
  The difference is that Norway and the US are liberal democracies and allies. China, quite the opposite. In fact, Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed. In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?

darkhorn 7y ago

I think Patriots do the same thing. But not S-400s.

JohnStrangeII 7y ago
That sounds overly optimistic.
420codebro 7y ago
The jerkoff-level lovefest for the S-400 on Reddit and HN is pretty hilarious. Ya, Russia is the straight arrow. USA is the crooked bitch. Keep those mental gymnastics up, bruh.

est31 7y ago

This reminds me of Windows 10 being used in countless non-US governments even though it has telemetry enabled.

csomar 7y ago
> you get calls from the US ambassador and it's not just economic reasons... Do you have details/links about that.
- est31 7y ago
  I can't find any sources about it any more but I vaguely remember reading about it. I'm sorry. As I can't find it, it certainly wasn't covered by big press. I'll remove that part of the comment to be on the safe side. It's not what my comment was supposed to be mainly about anyway. The main part of my comment was more to point out that this is a pattern: the USA is supplier of a major amount of technology that lends itself very well to mass surveillance and the western world uses it. The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer nations.
  - csomar 7y ago
    What you are saying basically (if I got it right) is that US ambassadors are in some way threatening the target country if they move out of a potential spying system. That's quite a statement and more like wikileaks material.
  - taneq 7y ago
    > The US got the unique chance to make the technology spy onto the customer nations. I dunno how unique that chance is any more. The whole world runs so on hardware made in China which could be compromised to do pretty much anything.
kebman 7y ago
Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) have campaigns from time-to-time where they highlight stuff like that to Norwegian state owned institutions, counties and municipalities.

kebman 7y ago

This article is over a year old. June 4th 2018. Norwegian blogs and press wrote about similar conserns already back in 2017. Not sure why this is pushed to the top at HN now :p

mytailorisrich 7y ago

One has to do wonder why a country would even consider buying a foreign plane that does this... Data should be under the control and scrutiny of the owner of the plane, who would pass on only what they are happy to.

yyyk 7y ago
Because developing good warplanes is extremely expensive and difficult. Also using same equipment as your allies has advantages - can secure external parts supply during a war, foreign planes can easily use your fields, etc. Of course, buying foreign planes comes with risks as well - parts supply might be embargoed, other countries will know something about your plane, etc. Judging by Norway's likely adversary (Russia), in all likelihood the risks were judged to be small compared to the advantages of using the best available plane from a country (US) usually not in good terms with Russia.
imtringued 7y ago
Because you're not going to use weapons against the nation that you bought them from.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  If you look to history, this really is not the case. Part of UK military strategy from the beginning of empire to the present day, is to sell arms to the people that you end up invading.
  - blattimwind 7y ago
    Meanwhile America made and sold a lot of guns into the middle east that are now used to kill Americans (among other people).
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Funny story: in the 80s the Iraqis were our allies and we (the British) sold them a bunch of kit, including their camouflage uniforms. In the first Gulf War happened and the British forces deployed in regular temperate camo. Everyone assumed it was because the supply chain was incompetent but the real story was it was too risky to fight in the same kit as the Republican Guard!

strooper 7y ago

I have seen the army in my country to emphasize on having total control on each and every equipment they have. They boast on being able to completely disassemble and reassemble all the mechanical war machines. I wonder how that works for software heavy war equipment, such as F-35. Does the seller provide full source code and control (and probably training?) over modification of the software? Do they agree on the paper only that the buyer can never get to use those weapons against the seller? Or, do they set those policies right inside the control units of those weapons? If the seller country have significant control on the control units of the war instruments sold to another country, and if the seller country is able to update/modify/ control/restrict devices over the air, won't that make the buyer country just an outpost of the seller country?

wil421 7y ago
In the case of new fighter jets. Absolutely not. Other countries do not get the full packages either. There are some parts they likely take out or give them slightly inferior parts.
- secfirstmd 7y ago
  As far as I remember there was information released about the French having our backdoors into radar systems it sold. I am sure most countries do something like that but this time the for caught.
nradov 7y ago
F-35 source code is only available to a limited subset of trusted allies. Mainly the UK, but it appears that a few other countries such as Israel have at least partial source code and the ability to build custom branches.
- no-dr-onboard 7y ago
  Doubtful. DoD/DoE contractors and manufacturers retain a large portion of military contracted IP material. For example, CNWDI in the nuclear world does not allow a anyone in the military access/knowledge portions of bombs/warheads below the maintenance plates. Sandia/LLNL/LANL keeps a (literal) tight lid on that knowledge, much less the very physical appearance. If the same schema were applied to airframes, it’s likely that Lockheed and NG retain rights to the manufacturers specific IP, which would include the source code to any avionics packages.

wil421 7y ago

It probably does a lot more than that. It’s alway been rumored some US military tech could suddenly be turned “off” in the event of a war. I couldn’t imagine a situation that would put Norway and the US on opposite sides. Since the military allows Norway to get F-35s they probably agree.

ginko 7y ago
I have the feeling that if there were ever a war between major powers breaking out, the first thing that would happen is that a large chunk of military equipment and critical infrastructure on both sides would get bricked pretty much immediately.
- auslander 7y ago
  And its financial system cut off. Like US disconnected Iranian banks from SWIFT, and there is no way today to bypass US financial system for international payments.
harry8 7y ago
you wouldn't like to bet that the US are the only ones capable of turning it off, either.
- wil421 7y ago
  “Off” in quotes. I bet it’s more like a software license. “you missed your 60 day update from Lockheed, your jet will stop working”
  - p_l 7y ago
    They fail to be fully operational after 30 days without connection to Lockheed servers, which is a problem even for USA because the connection is bandwidth intensive.
- 14 7y ago
  Reading your comment I pictured Geohot attempting to jailbreak an f35. It made me wonder can you brick an f35?

stunt 7y ago

> “Due to national considerations, there is a need for a filter where the user nations can exclude sensitive data from the data stream that is shared by the system with the manufacturer Lockheed Martin,” Gjemble ter. > “Norway has entered into a partnership with Italy to jointly finance the procurement and operation of a laboratory where we can enter nationally sensitive data, as we currently do on F-16,” Gjemble said.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

Apparently, in Austria, Eurofighter jets can't start until an NSA contractor on base types in an ignition key[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642194 >In order for the 15 Eurofighters to start, Austria's federal army paid 1.5 million euros over three years to a private US security company. Now, the costs for those two "civilians" stationed at the Zeltweg airbase have been confirmed, who have to allow every start with the current US-"Crypto-Keys" for navigation and friend or foe identification. The ministry of defense denies that the two Americans from a not named US company are NSA contractors. They claim the jets would fly without the keys but without encrypted navigation and communication. He also mentions the same situation for Sweden and Switzerland.

rjsw 7y ago
Sweden and Switzerland don't fly Eurofighter jets. They are also not members of NATO so I'm not surprised that they can only get NATO IFF codes under restrictions. No idea what is going on with Austria. EDIT: Austria isn't a member of NATO.
- bobowzki 7y ago
  Are we paying for these codes in Sweden? Would be quite interested to learn more about this.
  - dogma1138 7y ago
    For the codes directly no, for contractors with sufficient clearance for handling the keys yes. You can’t have it both ways as in want to interoperate with NATO forces as well as being covered by NATO CAPs and not be a member of NATO.
- sorokod 7y ago
  What restrictions do you think Sweden has with regards to NATO IFF codes?
  - deleted 7y ago

otakucode 7y ago

I'm curious about the actual communication here. Does each plane have a satellite uplink or something? If they do, I would expect that they would be configured to use Norways military satellite comms network. I'm not sure how or why that network would be able to contact Lockheed. So are there multiple communications systems? What portion of them are military and what portion, if any, transit the public Internet? Lockheed might own their own communication satellites, I'm not sure, but I really don't think they have carte blanche to use the US military communications networks for their own products. Details might be sensitive or classified so I'll probably just be kept wondering, but the mechanics of the actual physical communication of data aren't clear to me.

o-__-o 7y ago
Thank you for wondering out loud, your thoughts have been noted
p_l 7y ago
A horribly shitty software package called ALIS is required to operate F-35,this software communicates from ground facilities to Lockheed servers. Having dealt with the output of the part of Lockheed that makes logistical software, I say run for the hills.

a3n 7y ago

We've been carrying spy devices in our pockets. Now spy devices carry us.

mrtksn 7y ago

They only need to switch it to airplane mode! Kidding aside, the concerns over the possibility for such actions were the primary reasons why the Turkish public was totally O.K. with being expelled from the F-35 program.

kwhitefoot 7y ago

Is anyone genuinely surprised at this?