Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Instead of hack, it should read "Insurgents intercept U.S. Drone video feeds"

'Fixing the security gap would have caused delays'

'... it would have added to the Predator's price'

If you're paying $20 million each you'd think another million to ensure your targets don't see you coming would be a no-brainer?

I have a thought. How about next time the military just flies one of these things down to Defcon and lets people have a go. The hackers get a cool toy to play with a for a day and the military gets a free fairly sophisticated penetration test. I'm sure the flaw would have been found; instructions on how to intercept satellite data with about $100 worth of hardware have been floating around for years. I'll edit this post in a minute with details for anyone that's interested.

EDIT:

* One possible LNB: http://bit.ly/7AGe7e

* Possible dishes: http://bit.ly/4NfMN1

* One possible receiver (for digital, you'll need a different one for analog): http://bit.ly/4zHyND

* Useful forum: http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/

That setup is enough to pick up signals from satellites (locations: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=satellite+index). If you do this as a hobby you might want to spend the money on a motor to tilt/pan your dish for you. ;-) The article implies that such a setup is pretty much what the insurgents used to intercept video from the drones. The drone bounces its video up to a satellite and the satellite bounces back down to the operator. The insurgents just grab it when it's coming down to the operator from the satellite. I'm pretty sure (or at least I hope) the receiver would have to be modified to decompress/decrypt the drone data properly. It'll do just fine if you're scanning for legit TV signals.

You think operators won't notice and switch to something else? That strategy never works.

The question is, what do our defence contractors care more about: making their weapons actually work? Or merely selling them?