Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-26835725-20150730155944/@comment-24891101-20150730202401

Yes, because they're part of a massive network. It's a fundamental aspect of cyberwarfare that you need a network connection or the ability to gain physical access to a system to compromise it. There's no other way to do it. The whole point of an isolated network is to make it literally impossible to crack without physical access. Any way in which it talks to the outside world is a potential vulnerability, but then it's not really isolated. The really important stuff would be airgapped, nearly absolutely preventing attack without physical access.

Military networks have been attacked before, but that term covers a lot of things, probably mostly administrative. What we're talking about is battlefield C³I systems for a robotic force. That's an obvious target, and would be a difficult nut to crack. Admittedly, the necessities of a robotic force would probably have them able to form ad-hoc networks, but there's no reason for them to be able to talk to any computer other than their own command network and each other.

Hacking isn't something one can casually do.

Heartbleed was exploiting an existing vulnerability in an existing system that was widely used. Not introducing a virus or something.

As to the reactor thing, you might be able to damage it, but any sane design will mechanically fail safe. And the reactor stuff might be airgapped anyway, preventing most remote cyberattacks.