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Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

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Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#91

Post by stcredzero »

Retric wrote: post #59
naveensundar wrote: post #18

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. What about the uplink?

I assume that's encrypted for obvious reasons. However, encrypting live video feeds requires a lot more prepossessing power than encrypting telemetry so they apparently left it out. Honestly, from a classic military standpoint encrypted video does little for you. If you can intercept the transmission then you know where the drone is. The only advantage is knowing what it is looking at, but a traditional army is large…

Guerrilla, BTW.

The thing is, these drones' primary use is against insurgents, AFAIK.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#92

Post by stcredzero »

nettdata wrote: post #55
alecco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gas jet propelled ones have max speed of 200mph, while predators have 135mph. Can't wait for some sort of anti-predator with EMP gun or something making the 5M investment look stupid :) [With some kick ass AI doing the find-kill, soldiers shouting "f * NPCs"] [Note: I know emp guns weight ~50kg]

Why bother with anything like an EMP? At the cost of the DIY, it's disposable... just fly right into the thing and physically knock it out of the sky. BattleBots in Space. That's a pirated video I'd watch.

An explosive charge would probably be easier to engineer and more effective, in that case.

If you could program an Arduino drone to track a laser of a certain frequency, then you could make your own laser-guided missile.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#93

Post by roc »

rarrrrrr wrote: post #75
rdtsc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The later is true. There is a large, high througput, revolving door between DoD and large contractors. Yesterday's generals are today's board members and C*Os of large defense contractors. When something is purchased, or a bid is chosen, it is often because of those conections not because a product is inherently better. The result is a lot of overpriced, under-performing equipment. The amount of waste is just ridicul…

This is also an apt description of the relationship between the FDA and large pharmaceutical companies. Also, the USDA and large food companies. There are likely many more examples. It's a systemic problem of our structure of government.

The trick is: who better to run a military contractor than former military men? Who better to run a food company than someone who has worked in the USDA?

These are natural career paths for those individuals that make perfect, natural sense and --in and of themselves-- aren't a real issue.

The real issue is that our government can too easily reward individual companies or industry groups with hand-outs.

If a single general couldn't essentially hand a contract to a supplier on his say-so, that supplier gains nothing by bribing them with a future board position.

What we really need, is for it to be more difficult for individuals to drive contract selection and for the standards for passing a bailout, tariff or corporate welfare program to be much higher.

Perhaps by requiring such legislation to be stand-alone bills, and requiring an oversight office to evaluate contract selection.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#94

Post by ErrantX »

stcredzero wrote: post #92
nettdata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother with anything like an EMP? At the cost of the DIY, it's disposable... just fly right into the thing and physically knock it out of the sky. BattleBots in Space. That's a pirated video I'd watch.

An explosive charge would probably be easier to engineer and more effective, in that case. If you could program an Arduino drone to track a laser of a certain frequency, then you could make your own laser-guided missile.

Possibly a large bore shotgun then - that way you potentially get reuse without the effort of putting together a working guided rocket.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#95

Post by stcredzero »

eli wrote: post #87

"The military [is] trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones' feeds." Where by "better encrypting" they mean "using any encryption at all"

Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren't readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.

If some Russian software could intercept it, it wasn't that proprietary!

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#96

Post by stcredzero »

potatolicious wrote: post #10
tsally wrote: post #6

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 p…

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

Improper use of encryption has been a military problem forever. (I seem to recall problems even in Classical warfare.) It just gets bigger with more communication technology.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#97

Post by jpwagner »

pyre wrote: post #36
jpwagner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I obviously think they need to close the security gaps, I just want to make a comment on your comment: it's that kind of thinking that keeps our taxes increasing and our economy in shambles. I'm with @tsally on the solution to this kind of problem...

@tsally is advocating having 'real' hackers hack on the thing to find vulnerabilities. In this case though, the vulnerability was known but it would have cost more money to actually fix it. Having people attack the thing for vulnerabilities still wouldn't change the fact that you would need to pay however much money to do the fixing.

pff, you didn't address what I said...

"it's only another $1MM"

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#98

Post by [deleted] »

mjgoins wrote: post #71
conanite wrote: post #42

the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops What is the meaning of "pirated" here? Are they going to sue militants for copyright infringement?

New definitions of words creep into usage all the time, and this is one I've been noticing. Folks are using "pirate" to mean "intercept" or "surreptitiously copy", rather than the traditional usage (leaving aside the even older meaning, of course) of simply "distribute copyrighted material".

[deleted]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#99

Post by cabalamat »

alecco wrote: post #53
ErrantX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://diydrones.com/ :)

The gas jet propelled ones have max speed of 200mph, while predators have 135mph. Can't wait for some sort of anti-predator with EMP gun or something making the 5M investment look stupid :) [With some kick ass AI doing the find-kill, soldiers shouting "f * NPCs"] [Note: I know emp guns weight ~50kg]

Why bother with an EMP weapon, a rifle-calibre machine gun would do the job more efficiently.

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

#100

Post by stcredzero »

jedc wrote: post #84
KWD wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My first thought when reading the article was "WTF? No encryption?". Would be interested in learning more about the company that makes these, and how something so obvious was not done.

If they were first deployed in the 1990's, the technology was developed in the 1980's. Easily deployable software to grab the signals out of the air was probably outside the realm of what seemed possible then. Why it hasn't been fixed since is shocking!

Reminds me of Brian Singer's documentary "Spin," which is no longer available on YouTube. It was made of raw Satellite feed going down to local news stations.
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