Security holes were found both in aging systems and systems still under development, suggesting the problem is systemic. The vulnerabilities are surprisingly low-tech for a country that spends more on the military than the next seven countries combined. Many security flaws involved weak passwords and unencrypted network traffic. Others suggested a poor understanding of network security by military technicians.

Test teams were able to guess one administrator’s password in nine seconds, while some weapons systems used the default passwords that came with the commercial software that ran the systems. Testers were able to download and delete classified data, take over operators’ screens, and track operators’ activity without alerting them.

The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars on its military, but such expenditure is useless if these technologically-advanced systems can be hijacked by its enemies because someone forgot to change the factory-set password.