When you decide to go cheap...
Software developed in Belarus and Russia found on British nuclear submarines.
According to The Telegraph, the UK Ministry of Defence is investigating a "serious threat" to national security. Four years ago, the development of software for the system, which is used by engineers working with British nuclear submarines, including those carrying nuclear missiles, was outsourced to Minsk.
Rolls-Royce Submarines, which manages a fleet of nuclear submarines on behalf of the Ministry of Defense, decided in 2020 to modernize its internal communications network and hired WM Reply as a contractor. The work had to be done only by programmers located in the UK who had access to classified information. However, WM Reply handed over part of the code development task to programmers from Belarus. One of them, according to documents that are now being studied by the Ministry of Defense, in reality worked from Russia - from Tomsk.
The internal network of Rolls-Royce Submarines contains personal data of all employees of the company, as well as information about organizational structures working with nuclear submarines. The involvement of Belarusian and Russian developers in such projects is a clear risk to national security, says Marion Messmer, a senior fellow at the Chatham House think tank.
According to her, if attackers gain access to the personal data of those working in the British submarine fleet, the latter could become victims of "blackmail or targeted attack": "From a strategic point of view, submarines are good because they are very difficult to detect and they are very mobile. If someone had access to a tracking system showing where submarines are stationed at all times, it would give them a huge strategic advantage: when planning an attack on the UK, they could first target nuclear submarines and disable Trident [nuclear missiles]."
In order not to lose the contract, the management of WM Reply tried to hide the involvement of foreign programmers from Rolls-Royce. Some staff members expressed concern about this fact. But the executives decided not to tell Rolls-Royce, and to hide the Belarusian names, replacing them with the names of the deceased Britons.
WM Reply wanted to use foreign developers to cut costs. Belarusian programmers were "significantly cheaper" than British programmers, so involving them in a project worth around £500,000 "would have increased the rate of return", according to documents obtained by the Ministry of Defence.
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