When American troops fight the enemy in the not too distant future, soldiers will be linked to each other through a digital communications system that allows them to instantly access enemy locations through satellites and overhead drones, call in air strikes, or deploy smart weapons.

Ball State digital researchers Wayne Zage and Dolores Zage are preparing for that war—when hackers could be as dangerous as bullets for frontline troops—by identifying software vulnerable to potential tampering.

SMART: Security Measurements and Assuring Reliability through Metrics Technology is being directed from Ball State's computer science department. The project, funded by a $939,000 grant from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, includes researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago and Purdue University.

"As military communications grow more complicated with networked systems linking commanders to soldiers around the world, the chances that our communications may be compromised grows substantially," said Wayne Zage, who has been working with the Army Research Laboratory and other companies through the Software Engineering Research Center for more than 20 years on a variety of projects.

The research may be critical to American soldiers because the military is testing handheld computers that link soldiers to command and control centers often thousands of miles from a battlefield.

"We are looking at potential trouble spots, including defective coding and other areas that could allow someone to hack into a system, causing massive problems during a battle," he said. "Our job is to make sure that the military's communication systems are as reliable as they can be."