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Navy Developing Data 'Guns'

by Terrence O'Brien on April 3, 2010 at 08:30 AM

Navy Developing Data
When you think of cyber warfare, you probably picture highly trained hackers, sitting in the dark corners of military bases, surrounded by monitors, infiltrating the systems of rogue governments. The Navy, on the other hand, imagines a world where cyber weapons don't behave much differently from traditional ones. According to Military.com, the seafaring branch of our armed services is looking into developing a data "gun" that literally shoots streams of information over long distances.

The weapon would be mounted on a plane and "fired" at an antenna or satellite dish believed to be connected to an enemy network. The beam, consisting of carefully designed waveforms and algorithms, would be able to "unlock" the network and grant access to military cyber warriors, who would then wreak their particular brand of havoc. The hackers would then be able to flood systems with false data, perform digital intelligence gathering, or shutdown entire components of an enemy's defense, such as radar antennae.

The whole thing sounds like science fiction, but the military is very serious about this technolgy. The Navy has already set aside millions of dollars for the project, and hopes to have a functional unit by 2018. [From: Military.com, via: Fox News]

Tags: CyberWarfare, data, hack, military, navy, top, weapons

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