IG Report: Mapping Apps Are Endangering Special Operators

Military leaders have known of serious hacking risks for a year and a half, angering U.S. troops

U.S. special operators and other troops have been using advanced war-fighting applications for hand-held devices that contain software weaknesses that render them vulnerable to hacking by hostile actors, a non-public U.S. Navy Inspector General investigation found earlier this year.

The mapping applications at issue are known by their acronyms KILSWITCH and APASS and have been widely disseminated and used in training and combat among special operators and other forces across the military for several years, beginning with the Navy and Marine Corps in approximately 2012.

The apps are used to accelerate precision targeting and facilitate situational awareness and data-sharing between ground forces and overhead aircraft.

Navy leadership, along with top Pentagon officials, were alerted to the security problems in the Spring of 2017 but continued to allow frontline troops from multiple military branches, including special operators, to use them without issuing sufficient warnings or attempting to pull the applications back from use.

The IG report that faulted the programs is non-public, but its findings are cited in a Marine Corpsforce-wide message that warns commanders and officers in charge of cybersecurity for their units to ensure that the applications are only used in a manner consistent with explicit guidelines set by the top USMC information officer.

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