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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

No, the US doesn't export its armaments with any sort of remote disabling functionality, who would buy arms like that?

Actually it should be a simple as expiring whatever API key the jets use to communicate back to the US-based control servers. So when it POSTs to a StartEngine endpoint or whatever, it wouldn't start.

You're joking, right?

Lol.

No government would buy unreliable weapons.

No government could guarantee the reliability of purchased weapons. It is already known and been demonstrated that sabotaged arms will be bought.

What if they came with an Enhanced PROMIS Contract that guaranteed their reliability and lack of back doors and trojan horses?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inslaw

If web developers ran wars the world would be a safer place.

Apart from war machines communicating through HTTP, I can't help but giggle to the thought of such a dialog:

- I repeat, the enemy seems to be not responsive. - What, you already killed them? - No we came with a bigger force but their layout didn't change. I don't think they're war-scale.

Joking aside, there's nothing making HTTPS inherently less secure than any other secure channel out there, right?

(disclaimer: I'm a web developer)

After WWII we Brits sold cracked Engima machines internationally. You need to assume a foreign power would be willing to try and sell you equipment with backdoors. If they reasonably believed you wouldn't be able to spot them, or change actions if you did.

I remember this in the news, and again during the first Irak war (the stories were that the U.S. were asking France for the "code"), hence my question:

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11152/can-exocet...

Yes it does. The US nuclear weapons have PALs, and although they're not remote disabling functions, they require special codes, which are not given to the host country for arming them.

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