Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter aircraft can be jailbroken “just like an iPhone,” the Netherlands’ defense secretary has claimed. Gijs Tuinman made the comments during a podcast interview after being asked whether the aircraft’s software could be modified by European forces without permission from the US should it withdraw as an ally.
“The F-35 is truly a shared product,” Tuinman told BNR’s Boekestijn en De Wijk show. “The British make the Rolls-Royce engines, and the Americans simply need them too. And even if this mutual dependency doesn’t result in software updates, the F-35, in its current state, is still a better aircraft than other types of fighters.” “If you still want to upgrade despite everything … you can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone.”
Read more…
Source: The Register News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- US military disabled ad tracking on troops’ devices following reports of targeted attacks
September 4, 2026
The U.S. Department of Defense has disabled advertising tracking on troops’ phones and computers as part of an effort to protect them from threats that target their locations, according to a letter shared with Sen. Ron Wyden. Per a letter shared with the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden said that the U.S. Army, ...
- Judge rules the Pentagon’s supply chain risk label for Anthropic unlawful
August 28, 2026
A federal judge ruled the Pentagon’s decision to label AI company Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’ violated the law and ordered the designation be removed Thursday evening. Judge Rita Lin wrote that while the military should have wide latitude to decide which companies to work with, its actions against Anthropic “constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of ...
- China-Linked Hacking Group QTFY Targets Military and Critical Infrastructure with Malicious Distributed Systems
August 26, 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, and Cyber National Mission Force are releasing this joint cybersecurity advisory to alert organizations concerning China-linked cyber threat actors, who use the acronyms QTFY, QT, and QTCYBER for themselves and their tools and have developed malicious distributed platforms to compromise the networks of US and foreign organizations. ...
- UK MoD says no data leaked to China via drone vulnerability
August 10, 2026
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that there is no evidence that military data was compromised after a cyber vulnerability was discovered in Royal Navy drones. The issue was identified during routine cybersecurity testing, the ministry said, adding that it continues to conduct security checks across its equipment and systems. Read more… Source: EUROACTIV Sign up for the ...
- Mirage Kitten targets Middle East and Africa region with new malware
July 28, 2026
Mirage Kitten – also known as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm, and Nimbus Manticore – is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group focused on cyber-espionage operations against aerospace, aviation, defense, and telecommunications sectors across the Middle East and Africa, using highly targeted spear-phishing campaigns, fake recruitment portals, and custom multi-stage malware to gain persistent access and exfiltrate sensitive data. During ...
- Hacktivists call out Trump by hacking and defacing US Army websites
July 7, 2026
The U.S. Army has reportedly fixed two of its websites that had been defaced to display pro-Kurdish messages and to call out President Donald Trump, the latest case of hackers compromising systems run by the federal government in recent months. Security researcher Ronald Lovelace told Cyberscoop, which first reported the defacements, that error pages were modified on two U.S. Army ...