Originally Posted by
DIBO
Apple, Whatapp, etc. are recent, modern softwares running on recent OS's, itself on top of recent hardware. And all software layers are updated and patched every month or so. Backward compatibility or support is limited, these softwares simply stop functioning on old hardware or on an OS that's 5 years out of date.
Most military onboard technology in use today was designed ages ago, running on electronics developed decades ago, with software of similar age and hardware midlife updates every decade or less, and software upgrade cycles way much longer than the commercial examples given. And backward compatibility with other platforms (for datalink, etc.) prevents implementing only the latest security standards and encryption protocols.
The software or hardware platform is irelevant.
Modern encryption algorithms are mathematical in nature and if implemented correctly as I said before, are to all intents and purposes unbreakable.
The older hardware can quite happily encrypt data using the latest encryption algorithms, but it will all happen a little slower that all.
Whether they do this or not, I have no idea, and unless you work in the military you wont have either. And if you do, you would not be talking about it here as you would be breaking your governments official secrets act.
As an aside everybody thinks public key encryption was invented in the US. Not so, a researcher at GCHQ invented in at home in his head in the early 70's, but the UK goverment kept it secret for around 30 years.
Typical with our bloody government.