Russian software used to design British submarines Telegraph

Royal Navy contractor tried to save money by designing communications software for nuclear engineers in Eastern Europe

A company hired to design software for a British submarine builder outsourced the job to programmers from Belarus and Russia, The Telegraph reported Friday. The company then tried to cover up the potential security breach, according to British Ministry of Defence documents seen by the newspaper.

The company, a digital consultancy called WM Reply, was hired in 2020 to build an intranet for Rolls-Royce Submarines employees, The Telegraph reports. Rolls-Royce’s nuclear engineers – who design submarines exclusively for the Royal Navy – will use the intranet to communicate at work without the security risks of connecting to the wider internet.

Given the sensitive nature of Rolls-Royce Submarines’ work, UK MoD regulations stipulated that the intranet could only be designed by UK staff with security clearances. Instead, WM Reply outsourced most of the work to programmers in Belarus and one who worked remotely from Tomsk in Siberia.

In late 2020, WM Reply employees were concerned about the use of subcontractors based in a country that is an adversary of the UK. Conference call transcripts given to MoD investigators revealed that the company decided not to inform Rolls Royce about the outsourcing to avoid the cancellation of a £500,000 ($640,000) contract.

One employee interviewed suggested giving the Belarusian programmers the names of “dead people in the UK”, while another recommended that a British programmer compile all code created in Belarus and Russia to make the software appear to have been created entirely in the UK.

Rolls Royce was eventually told that foreign programmers would be used, but the company was not informed that those programmers would be located in Russia or Belarus, documents released to the Ministry of Defence say.

Rolls Royce began investigating the matter in 2021, and an MoD inquiry was launched the following year, during which time the UK was supporting the Ukrainian military in the conflict with Russia. Rolls Royce has since severed ties with WM Reply, a spokesman for the submarine maker told The Telegraph, adding that “at no point was there a risk that data, classified or otherwise, was shared with individuals who did not have security clearances.”

“This matter has been fully investigated by Rolls-Royce. They said at no time was the integrity of the system compromised,” a ministry spokesman said.

However, defence analysts told the newspaper that programmers may have accessed the contact details of Rolls Royce employees, leaving them vulnerable to blackmail or cyberattacks.

WM Reply’s decision to outsource “potentially exposed us to the risk of undermining our national security,” former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the newspaper.

(RT.com)