Trump campaign arms up with 'unhackable' phones after Iranian intrusion

With less than a month to go before American voters head to the polls to choose their next president, the Trump campaign has been investing in secure tech to make sure it doesn't get hacked again.

Military kit supplier Green Hills Software has equipped Trump's team with supposedly unhackable phones and computers as the campaign attempts to avoid a repeat of earlier incidents where pro-Iranian attackers managed to steal emails and other data from the crew. The provider claims its software is impervious to any intrusion attempts and has also offered the technology to the Harris campaign team.

The kit uses the Green Hills Integrity-178B operating system, which is used on the stealth B-2 bomber, F-22, and F-35 fighters, and appears to be one of the only commercially available OSes certified to Evaluation Assurance Level 6. The company says its security comes from tight coding and locking down absolutely everything it can to minimize the opportunities for intrusion.

Green Hills Software CEO Dan O'Dowd told The Register that the entire operating system of the devices operates on around 10,000 lines of code that are penetration tested by a team incentivized to find bugs.

"I've had staff complaining that they can't find enough bugs," O'Dowd claimed.

For now, the company focuses on high profile users, building a billion-dollar business providing secure operating systems for the military and law enforcement.

"We spend thousands of dollars reviewing every line of code," he said. "Everything is security Day 1, 2, and 10 without being checked. We have a whole team checking each other's code."

The software shop claims it is immune to zero-click commercial surveillance tools such as the NSO group's Pegasus code and Green Hills asserts the phones "never fail and can't be hacked."

However, this is like a red rag to a bull for some criminally minded coders, as well as white-hat hackers. Logically, no software is impervious to dedicated attacks, but Green Hills thinks otherwise, and also wants to extend the use of the code to election systems themselves.

"We must also ensure that the same level of security and reliability used in nuclear systems be applied to voting machines, given their critical role in the electoral process," O'Dowd said. "Securing the integrity of the democratic process is paramount."

The firm isn't wrong on the latter point. As has been shown again and again, election voting systems are woefully inadequate, despite strenuous efforts by the hacking community to fix insecure systems. As we race towards election day, Green Hills will soon see if its kit lives up to its claims. ®