Does Offshoring Threaten Combat Software?

PreacherTom writes, "Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that offshoring presents too great a risk."

Appeals to emotion for fun and profit

[Control Group]

"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that offshoring presents too great a risk."
Blaming "offshoring" is a neat wave of the bloody shirt, but I don't think it's relevant to the problem. Take the word "offshoring" out of that quote, and replace it with "outsourcing." Does it still make sense? Let's see:

"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that outsourcing presents too great a risk."

Looks like it does.

If the problem is that there aren't enough resources (including time) to do a sufficiently thorough audit of all the code, then it doesn't matter where the code was written, does it? Do we really suppose that a malicious actor would have that much harder a time getting a job for a DoD contractor in the US than overseas? Do we really suppose that it would be that much more difficult to suborn a programmer overseas than here?

Or, more accurately, is it enough more difficult in either case for us to be confident of code written inside the country as opposed to outside?

It's not that I do think that offshored code is trustworthy, it's that I don't think "onshored" code is. And if we can't trust either, what does offshoring have to do with anything?

New tag: "noshit"

[Kadin2048]

I'm glad the Pentagon finally woke up to reality, where maybe it's not such a hot idea to pay some Indian contract programmers a few bucks an hour to write the firmware for your cruise missiles.

I'm not sure of the exact law, but I believe there is one which basically says, all U.S. defense procurement must come from domestic sources, unless it's some exceptional item that can only be purchased abroad. Maybe we need a law like that for government contracting and outsourcing. Unless there's a demonstratable reason for having to do it offshore, it shouldn't be.

Re:Appeals to emotion for fun and profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really suppose that a malicious actor would have that much harder a time getting a job for a DoD contractor in the US than overseas?

Yes.

Do we really suppose that it would be that much more difficult to suborn a programmer overseas than here?

Yes.

Re:Scary!!!

[Sepper]

What scares me the most is the fact that they even gave offshoring a consideration!!!

The DOD didn't do it themselves... they outsourced it to contractor 1 who outsourced part 1A and 3B to contractor 2 who outsourced it offshore.

Re:Hysterical rubbish

[gb506]

This happened about the time we stopped using the army for actual defense of the country and instead started using it to bully the rest of the world.

Let's see now, who have we directly bullied since the War Department became the DoD?

North Korea - fuzzy, cuddly little things they are, what with the gulags, starvation, totalitarianism, etc.

North Vietnam - stict followers of peace and non-aggression, them. Never hurt a flea.

Grenada - after cuddly little Cubans took over the island nation by force and trapped American sudents

Panama - after that cute little fuzzball Noriega decided to become a primary drug conduit and looked the other way as his military took to brutalizing US service members and their wives.

Iraq - warm and fuzzy Saddam invades neighbor and appears to have desire to go to Saudi, potentially throwing geopolitical and economic stability to the sewer.

Somalia - Aidid hordes food from starving Somalis, we go to try to assist. Real bullies we were in trying to help out...

Balkans - those nice, peace-loving Serbs and their enlightened ways of genocide, rape, etc. Bullies we were!!!

Afghanistan - Wonderfully cordial and free thinking taliban, harboring terrorists and disallowing sports, music, games, education for women, etc. Bullies we were!!!

Iraq (2) - The nice man Saddam and his systematic use of rape as a torture tool, sons Uday and Qusay raping newlywed brides in front of grooms, killing Iraqi olympic athletes who didn't measure up, putting living humans through shredders - how dare we bully those wonderful folks??!!!

You are indeed and "soft_guy", in more ways than you know. You're also a hopelessly twisted moonbat with a phase inverted worldview.

Re:Hysterical rubbish

[ArcherB]

So if a country's leaders are assholes, then the US has the right to butcher its people????

Where do you come up with this garbage? After all the wars listed by GP, we have yet to fill up a single mass grave of civilians. We have, however, found many filled by the country's previous asshole leaders. No one seems to give a shit about that!

So, to edit your statement to make it true:
So if a country's leaders are assholes, then the US has the duty to prevent the butcher its people????

Re:Hysterical rubbish

[gb506]

No, ArcherB, foreign leaders murdering thier own people is only a good thing to wring our collective hands and talk about , not to actually do anything about...