3.8.22
Russian military equipment seized by Ukrainian forces throughout an explosive conflict poised to enter its third week may prove a gold mine for U.S. intelligence looking to get a rare look at Moscow's weapons and the encrypted command and control data they contain, current and former U.S. military personnel told Newsweek. "The gear is huge," Mike Jason, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo, told Newsweek. "It's like capturing an enigma machine." The term refers to the cipher device employed by Nazi Germany during World War II to mask the Third Reich's secret communications, a code ultimately unraveled by the Allies, constituting a major intelligence advantage. Now as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to argue today for the "denazification" of Ukraine through what he has deemed a "special military operation" decried by much of the international community as an unjustified invasion of the neighboring country, an opportunity may exist to listen in on Moscow's war effort. Should Ukraine get its hands on such assets, Jason said there are "immediate implications" and "long-term implications," including those that involve the country's foreign backers.
Among the potential "immediate" impacts would be that Kyiv "can perhaps listen in right now to what is happening, then exploit in real-time," Jason said. One of the possible "long-term" effects he identified was that "the equipment can be reverse-engineered, say, sent to a major foreign intelligence exploitation lab, etc." Here, Jason said, even seemingly innocuous devices such as radios, if still intact, could contain important so-called "crypto" information, giving an insight into Russia's encoded communications. "And then," he added, "technology can be developed to jam and/or listen in, etc." One particularly important alleged find for Kyiv was the Pantsir surface-to-air missile system, several of which have been said to have been taken intact by Ukrainian units. Jason said this would potentially be "a huge get," as it's assumed such a weapon "talks to friendly aircraft to deconflict friend-or-foe" and "would be tied to command and control systems at a high level.""As systems move from analog to digital, the exploitation game changes a bit," the U.S. military aviator said. "The software and source code are the critical items, because you can find zero-day vulnerabilities and build a tool to attack it if/when the time comes."
