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So let me get this straight Modern cars have engines that are cryptographically ties to keys But the Pentagon couldn’t put biometric locks on their humvees?

by EGreg 3y ago

So let me get this straight Modern cars have engines that are cryptographically ties to keys But the Pentagon couldn’t put biometric locks on their humvees? https://www.ibtimes.co.in/isis-takes-dozens-captured-us-humvees-tanks-syria-iraq-602939 https://www.ibtimes.co.in/isis-takes-dozens-captured-us-humv... They can’t account for trillions of dollars… but we vote them more money they didn’t even ask for https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/us/politics/trump-budget.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/us/politics/trump-budget.... ”Mr. Trump’s budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending — which is more than the Pentagon had asked for“

Eisenstein 3y ago
Let me get this straight -- there is graft, waste, and incompetence in the defense industry??
- galaxyLogic 3y ago
  The men in power always abuse that power, more or less. We need oversight but politicians are not very interested in doing oversight because corporations use their money as free speech helping their favorite politicians get re-elected, because of the Supreme Court decision that allows that to happen. So we need a more informed population to stop corruption from happening, but some politicians don't like the idea that people should be able to read whatever books they want.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  That's probably true, but tangential to the absurd point made above. There is almost zero reason to include robust locks or immobilizers on military vehicles. They're either occupied by soldiers with guns. Or in a locked facility, guarded by soldiers with guns. Or abandoned on the battlefield (in which case, they should be scuttled, but shit happens and sometimes you need to GTFO ASAP).
kube-system 3y ago
Locks are often intentionally omitted from equipment in environments where high availability is prioritized. They are also often omitted in locations where physical security is provided at a broader level.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Sure, let's intentionally omit locks from equipment that is designed not to fall into enemy hands. Let's not have a kill switch, either. Sure, makes sense for an agency with more money to spend than every corporation in America!
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Yes, it does make sense that the DoD is more concerned about their own soldiers' lives than whether or not the Iraqi military has their vehicles stolen from them. These vehicles were already given away, adding some stupid biometric system would increase both the price of the vehicles and the number of lives lost due to failures. Throwing technology at problems is not always a solution. The vehicles typically have better security than a lock anyway, they're occupied or guarded by soldiers with guns. You might be familiar with locks on vehicles due to your own experiences, but deterrence to unoccupied theft is a requirement that is somewhat unique to civilian passenger vehicles. It is completely normal for many other types of vehicles to have very minimal or zero theft mitigations due to operating in different conditions with different requirements. For example, multi-million dollar jets have no anti-theft systems at all.
    - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
      > Throwing technology at problems is not always a solution It's a fine solution to the very pressing "VCs aren't giving me money" problem. You can't have a blockchain or AI startup, say, without throwing technology at random things!
  - seabird 3y ago
    Even if you put the locks on, they would never be used. If you need it you need it right now, and it's usually life or death. If somebody is trying to steal it, you shoot them. The last thing you want to be doing in a gunfight is fucking with a lock.
velosol 3y ago
What a nightmare that would be: wearing gloves, fast entry and exit, injury/swapping drivers, sand. Also those were Humvees taken from Iraqi personnel.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Or: "Our unit was ambushed while setting up camp. We could all have escaped alive in our truck, if not for the fact that the first of us killed by the enemy was Private Jeane, and she was the one with the keys."
sleepybrett 3y ago
Even if you put this device in a car or a biometric device in a car or even a normal keyed system. An enemy who has possession of that car for more than a few hours can easily bypass most locking devices. This one is nothing more than a relay on the battery line. Simply find the relay and bridge it. Problem solved. Might take you a few hours to dig under the dash to find the damn thing, but once you do 'problem fucking solved'.
alistairSH 3y ago
But the Pentagon couldn’t put biometric locks on their humvees? The tanks that were stolen belonged to the Iraqi armed forces, not the US Army.

Terr_ 3y ago

> Sure, let's intentionally omit locks from equipment that is designed not to fall into enemy hands. Slow down there with the sarcasm and think about the actual requirements or use-cases first. Your average operable military vehicle is in one of three situations: 1. Actively occupied or guarded from theft by current owners/operators with guns who will not tolerate strangers getting close. 2. Parked somewhere in the middle of a whole bunch of people who are generally guarding the whole area, and those people may need to be able to operate it very quickly. 3. In some long-term storage which is well-fenced, under surveillance, guarded by people with guns, and typically very far from both overt enemies and opportunistic thieves. So there's already an access control system tuned to a particular set of needs... and one of those needs includes "using it to escape from something dangerous even if the prior-driver and everything in their pockets got vaporized."

EGreg 3y ago
How many tanks and materiel did Ukrainians take from the Russians? On October 2022 it was an estimated 453 Russian tanks. I guess 1, 2, 3 don't work that well in battle https://www.newsweek.com/how-russian-tanks-captured-ukraine-helping-fight-vladimir-putin-1750115 https://www.newsweek.com/how-russian-tanks-captured-ukraine-... Also for other things too: https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/ukrainians-strike-russians-with-their-own-anti-tank-missile/ https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/ukrainians-strike-russians-wit...
- kube-system 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that locks would have prevented this?
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Certainly kill switches would Every TV show has a self destruct mechanism to prevent a ship from falling into enemy hands and blabla etc
    - kube-system 3y ago
      An opposing military capable of leading the Russian military to abandon their tanks would also have the capability of defeating a kill switch once they have unhindered physical access to it. Scuttling has been a common military practice, for literally millennia. This practice is unrelated to the presence of any locks on the vehicle. Militaries are equipped with explosives and weapons and can perform these actions without them being built into the vehicle. The reason this did not happen is not due to the construction of their vehicles, it is because they did not take action to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling The automated self-destruct countdowns you have seen in movies and TV shows are used for dramatic effect. In reality, it is cheaper, more reliable, and safer to scuttle a manned vehicle manually.
    - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
      So... you're basing your opinion about machines used by soldiers in combat.... on fictional television shows? Just a question, have you ever worked with soldiers before?
    - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
      Forget the suspensefully-narrated self destruct sequences, why has the Pentagon not invested in plot armour for every soldier? Make sure the uniforms aren't red and they can only die near series finales.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  So what? None of that wall-spaghetti supports an argument for keyed ignition locks as the solution. It's not like those Russian troops had just stepped away to get coffee. If anything, it suggests other things like: 1. Russia shouldn't have tried a desperate blitzkreig through muddy terrain. 2. The Russian military should have had better policies/equipment to destroy or scuttle the ofabandoned tanks. 3. Russian tank-drivers should have had better training so that they didn't get their vehicles stuck in embarrassing ways. Plus it's not like the opposing force will be a bunch of joyriding delinquents: Even if you completely remove your abandoned truck's steering-wheel and pedals, your way out, they've got mechanics and tools and factories, they can just fit their own. Truly denying them any valuable salvage is actually a lot of work/damage.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  No fucking key is going to stop them from finding that tank in a field, towing it back to a farm behind friendly lines, and bypassing the fucking lock using a fucking hammer or a soldering iron.