Defense Firms Hit by Cyber Espionage at Arms Show

This week, France plays host to Eurosatory, one of the largest land-arms shows in the world, located near Paris. The exhibition space has representatives from more than 130 countries, according to Reuters.

The arms show is also a cyber sleuths heaven, with major defense contractors coming under siege from cyber espionage.

“It is very easy to go crawling over everybody’s systems here. Some people come and their approach is to grab everything they can,” a company official from a Western company told Reuters. “There are two approaches — they either try to take the whole haystack and look for a needle, or there are those who know exactly what needle they are looking for.”

Some of the threats at the conference include theft, electronic eavesdropping and covert photography.

“Everyone is told to keep their eyes and ears open, watch that equipment doesn’t disappear. If people take photographs, we need to know who they are,” a French executive said.

While contractors are careful not to bring classified information, sensitive business information is still available on laptops and could also provide avenues for information gathering about IT systems.

“The digital battle space brings a new set of non-kinetic challenges. You can do anything there you can do kinetically,” said Julian Hellebrand, chief of staff at Cobham.

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