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Sunday November 22, 2009 9:15 PM AEST
Skip Navigation LinksPC Authority > News > Portable gadget gives soldiers instant hacking skills in the field
Portable gadget gives soldiers instant hacking skills in the field
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Portable gadget gives soldiers instant hacking skills in the field

by Daniel Long  on May 27, 2009
The US military is working on a portable hacking device that would allow soldiers untrained and unskilled in the art of cyber warfare to infiltrate enemy networks at the click of a few buttons.

In a future not too far away, a soldier in battle needs to jam an enemy satellite signal before sensitive data is sent to an enemy base.  In another scenario, our future solider needs to break into a secure VOIP network and listen in on the enemies calls. Except the same soldier has no hacking skills and he doesn't know the first thing about programming, let alone cyber espionage. 

Instead, a backpack wearable device worn by the soldier could give our amateur hacker all the tools he needs to to get the job done, without a whiff of knowledge of scripts and coding. And it can happen as easily as a soldier uses his intercom to call base.

Now, according to a report from Aviation week, a revolution may be brewing in the way soldiers engage in cyber warfare. With the best and brightest minds usually tucked away in a lab somewhere, safe from bullets, this could bring hacking out into the open battlefield.

Because the battlefield is hardly the most convenient place for a highly skilled hacking operative to venture, giving the same skills to an ordinary soldier might give modern armies the upper hand in the information war.

The portable hacking gadget is supposedly aimed at  hacking secure data installations and breaking into enemy networks with relative ease.

This kind of instant 'hacking for dummies' has long excited Hollywood - in fact, this reminds us of a scene in Aliens where the soldier breaks into a secured door using a similar portable hacking device. Only now, this could be a reality on the actual battlefield in a few years to come.

 

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