Rolls-Royce submarine project exposed to Russian hackers
2:11 PM EDT, August 5, 2024
A significant security breach in the United Kingdom involved outsourcing work by one of the subcontractors for Rolls-Royce Submarines to employees in Belarus and Russia. This is an example of why outsourcing services in certain sectors can be dangerous.
According to The Telegraph, due to errors by the subcontractor who also attempted to conceal their foreign employees, there was a risk of acquiring data on British engineers working on maintaining and developing British submarines carrying nuclear weapons.
With this data, Russian services could then, for instance, through blackmail, force these individuals to reveal secret information. All because the company WM Reply, tasked with developing a new intranet (internal network), outsourced part of the work to external programmers from Minsk and Tomsk.
Some employees at a meeting in 2020 raised the issue that Rolls-Royce Submarines should be informed of this fact, but the supervisors ignored these concerns and suggested disguising the subcontractors under the identities of deceased Britons. All of this was to avoid losing a contract worth £500 million.
Eventually, the matter reached Rolls-Royce Submarines in 2021 and the UK's Ministry of Defence in 2022, which triggered an investigation that continued until February 2023. It is worth noting that, according to Rolls-Royce Submarines, the subcontractors did not have access to any server data, and every modification to the intranet or other software undergoes a security review before implementation. Nevertheless, WM Reply was blacklisted as a subcontractor for Rolls-Royce Submarines.
The British possess a fleet of four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines capable of carrying 16 Trident II nuclear ballistic missiles. Each is equipped with three MIRV warheads and has a range of approximately 7,500 miles.
The Vanguard-class submarines entered service between 1993-1999 as HMS Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant, and Vengeance. They are characterized by a length of 492 feet, a displacement of 17,196 tons, and are operated by 132 sailors. The range and underwater endurance are technically unlimited, with the only constraint being the food supply for the crew.
It is worth noting that for seven years, the British had issues with the HMS Vanguard submarine, which underwent urgent repairs from 2012 to 2022 due to radioactive contamination of the reactor cooling system caused by defective nuclear fuel.
